Eastern Europe Privatization Yearbook

2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Eastern Europe Privatization Yearbook: Major Programs and Projects

Hella Engerer analyses the emergence, evolution and theory of property rights and establishes the limits for privatization of state owned enterprises in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe. She counters the assumption that reduction of the state sector helps to create the basis for a private property system, showing that privatization actually presupposes a stable framework including property order. She makes use of an outstanding methodological approach, reaching well beyond the limits of pure economic observation. This is a major contribution to the understanding of the emerging economic order of Central and Eastern Europe.

This volume is meant to be a modest contribution to the ongoing debate about the transitions away from the administrative planning environment typical of the former communist regimes. The central subject matter is a fairly special one, namely the privatization of these economies together with the restoration and effective monitoring of property rights. These are paramount tasks of the ongoing transformations once progress toward pOlitical democracy is secured. Though I would not allot divestment of existing state-owned assets the kind of pivotal importance that some observers reserve for it, changing rules on the utilization of these assets is evidently at the core of what the transition toward market-based economic systems should be all about. Rather than examining the entire range of issues that surround the controvery on privatization, this volume is primarily concerned with the economics of taking the state out of the decision making about existing assets. Among the several aspects of this discussion three stand out. One is the establishment of clear property rights. This is fundamental to minimize trans action costs in an environment where decisions will increasingly be taken by independent economic agents acting on their own account. Second, I look only incidentally at the various angles of creating capital markets, particularly for existing assets, in these economies.

Now that the euphoria over political change has died down, the formerly socialist countries of Eastern and Central Europe are facing an economic crisis. The contributors to this well-established annual publication consider the key factors affecting the economic transition process, analyzing possible strategies for successful reform including the use of "shock theory" to accelerate the process. As well as examining various country-specific problems, the authors explore the status of the Central European countries seeking integration with the European Economic Community, and ask whether all the former socialist countries might do well to adopt some of the economic development strategies used so successfully by the nations of Southeast Asia.

Central and Eastern European countries are facing the transition from central to market systems with different strategies and capacities. As the task of societal transformation is without precedent in world history, the massive economic restructuring has revealed the need for distributive justice and general well-being. As the editors and contributors to this volume point out, the monolithic preoccupation with economic restructuring in a market economics framework is implemented at the expense of social protection and security. In contrast to traditional views of privatization as only an economic or managerial phenomenon, this collection approaches privatization as a broader integrated process of societal transformation. Privatization as defined here consists of integrated processes of societal restructuring that affect sociopolitical, economic, and ideological constructs as well as human and physical capital development, transformation of family structures, market stabilization, and organization of social care. Public policymakers as well as scholars and researchers of contemporary Eastern Europe will find this collection of great interest, and an important challenge to the economic models of privatization which undervalue social costs.

Experienced contributors with a balanced and realistic view of the prospects for privatization and the reform of state-owned enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa Clearly written and well structured, with numerous useful references to other studies at the end of each chapter