We analyse the effects of different types and concentration of ownership on performance using a large population of firms in the Czech Republic after mass privatization. Specifications based on first-differences combined with instrumental variables show that the performance effects of different...

Under communism, workers had their wages set according to a centrally-determined wage grid. In this paper we use new micro data on men to estimate returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy. We use data from the Czech Republic because it...

Using micro data on women in the Czech Republic, we compare returns to various measures of human capital at the end of communism (1989), in mid-transition (1996) and in late/post-transition (2002). We show: dramatic increases in returns to education from 1989 to 1996 but no change from 1996 to 2002;...

We analyse investment behaviour of the population of medium and large industrial firms located in the Czech Republic in 1992–5. We examine the relevance of alternative models of investment and test if investment behaviour varies across ownership-legal form categories of firms. By using a large...

We analyze the principal objectives and constraints of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), using data from a survey of 437 owners and top managers (CEOs) of SMEs in Russia and Bulgaria. The CEOs display similar views and identify a small number of specific constraints as being the most...

We use new firm-level data to examine the effects of spinoffs and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, which analyzes spinoffs almost exclusively in advanced economies, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the...