During the 1980s, the restructuring of Chinese industry was driven principally by the entry of new enterprises into the enterprise system and by the restructuring of managerial incentives. In 1993, China’s leadership formally inaugurated the shareholding experiment. This paper examines the...

Dual track liberalization, relying upon the continued enforcement of existing contracts and the simultaneous creation of a free market sector, represents a powerful mechanism in economic reform. If not anticipated, the reform implements an outcome that is both Pareto improving and e±ciency...

This paper uses individual-level data to characterize economy-wide job creation and destruction during periods of massive structural adjustment. We contrast the gradualist Czech and the rapid Estonian approach to the destruction of the communist economy to provide evidence on selected...

This paper uses published case studies of firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to examine how firms are reacting to the pressures of transition. Most firms made short run adjustments to output and input use; fewer firms began to make strategic adjustments. The paper examines how...

Does entrepreneurial optimism affect business performance? Using a unique data set based on repeated survey design, we investigate this relationship empirically. Our measures of ‘optimism’ and ‘realism’ are derived from comparing the turnover growth expectations of 133 owners-managers...

The paper investigates linkages between regional unemployment and regional wages in Hungary. The evolution of a 'wage curve' is followed from 1989 to 1995 using surveys of employees, employers and unemployed job seekers. Cross-section earnings functions are estimated to measure the impact of...

Company transformation in central Europe is qualitatively different from that observed in the West because of upheaval in the institutional environment. Case data from &= in the Czech Republic suggest that institutional upheaval slows the pace and progress of company transformation because it...

I put forward a new theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between soft budget constraint syndrome and the economic performances of firms. It differs from the existing theoretical framework, à la Dewatripont and Maskin (1995), in the soft budget constraint literature. In this paper,...

This paper documents the ultimate shareholding structures of 826 corporations listed on China's stock market and finds large equity holdings of the government. Using a panel data set, this paper further finds that corporate value decreases with an increased size of government shareholding when...

This paper explores interactions between growth, economic liberalization and democratization during transition. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) Liberalization has a strong positive effect on growth during transition (also when controlling for endogeneity of liberalization in...