NOTE: We will make final revisions to this paper in July 2000, at which time we will make reference to all pertinent papers that have come to our attention by June 30, 2000. If anyone reading this survey knows of a pertinent paper not presently included in the list of references, please send a copy or a reference to one of us. *Djankov is Financial Economist at the World Bank. Murrell is Professor of Economics and Chair of the Academic Council of the IRIS Center, University of Maryland. We would like to thank Judy Hellerstein, John McMillan, John Nellis, and Jan Svejnar for helpful advice and Wooyoung Kim and Tatiana Nenova for research assistance. This research was made possible through support provided by the World Bank and by the U.S. Agency for International Development under Cooperative Agreement No. DHR-0015-A-00-0031-00 to the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS). The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the IRIS Center, US AID, the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Enterprise Restructuring in Transition: A Quantitative Survey Abstract. There are now over 125 empirical papers that analyze the process of enterprise restructuring in transition

WHEN THE FIRST SIGNS appeared about ten years ago that the socialist experiment was finally over, surprise and optimism immediately followed. Surprise was caused by

A growing and deepening divide has opened up between transition countries where economic development has taken off and those caught in a vicious cycle of institutional backwardness and macroeconomic instability. This "Great Divide " is visible in almost every measure of economic performance: GDP growth, investment, government finances, growth in inequality, general institutional infrastructure, and increasingly in measures of financial development. Strategies for financial development have differed dramatically across countries and over time, offering interesting opportunities to study the links between real and financial sector development. Even in the countries that have made it across the divide like

author. They do not represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they This paper intends to properly account for China's two decades of market transition by examining its institutional foundations. The journey of transition is analyzed as a two-stage process. In the first stage (1978-93), the system was reformed to unleash the standard forces of incentives, hard budget constraints, and competition, but the underlying institutional forms and mechanisms are far from conventional: reforming government through regional decentralization; entry and expansion of nonstate (mostly local government) enterprises; financial stability through "financial dualism; " and a dual-track approach to market liberalization. In the second stage, China aimed to build a rule-based market system incorporating international best practice institutions but proceeded in its own way. Major progress was made in the first five years (1994-98) on the unification of exchange rates and convertability of the current account; the overhaul of the tax and fiscal systems; reorganization of the central bank; downsizing of the government bureaucracy; and privatization and restructuring of state-owned enterprises. To complete its transition to markets, China still faces serious challenges, especially in transforming its financial system and state-owned enterprises and in establishing the rule of law.

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In recent years, comparative economics experienced a revival, with a new focus on comparing capitalist economies. The theme of the new research is that institutions exert a profound influence on economic development. We argue that, to understand capitalist institutions, one needs to understand the basic tradeoff between the costs of disorder and those of dictatorship. We then apply this logic to study the structure of efficient institutions, the consequences of colonial transplantation, and the politics of institutional choice.

World Bank, This paper examines the problems of Russia’s post-communist economic transformation. Its main thesis is that the Russian attempt at radical economic reform largely failed, because of extraordinary rent-seeking by old enterprise managers through export rents, subsidized credits, import subsidies and direct government subsidies, while they gained little from privatization. The reason why the managers were so strong was that the Soviet Union left large economic distortions behind and a virtually unconstrained economic elite. The reforms could have been reinforced if democratic institutions had been developed faster, or if the West had provided financial support for the reforms in early 1992. Over time, rents have dwindled, but Russian institutions have been seriously damaged by corruption. Intense competition over rents contributed to the financial crash in August 1998, but the competition also limits the rents, and might ease the way for future reforms. 2 During the last decade, Russia’s GDP has fallen by about 40 percent, and GDP is likely to fall by several percent in 1999. In parallel, Russia has seen an extraordinary increase in income

Ten years have passed since the publication of my book The Road to a Free Economy: Shifting from a Socialist System—the Example of Hungary (referred to hereafter as Road.) It was the first book in the international literature to put forward comprehensive proposals for the post-socialist transition. This paper sets

During transition, maintaining employment and providing a social safety net to the unemployed are important to social stability, which in turn is crucial for the productivity of the whole economy. Because independent institutions for social safety are lacking and firms with strong profit incentives have little incentives to promote social stability due to its public good nature, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are needed to continue their role in providing social welfare. Charged with the multi-tasks of efficient production as well as social welfare provision, SOEs continue to be given low profit incentives and consequently, their financial performance continues to be poor. Keywords: Dual-track reform, multi-task, social stability, unemployment

The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 th century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsizing, rather than strategic restructuring, as a result of both internal and external constraints on restructuring strategies. Building on the organizational learning and resource-based theories, we analyze strategies available to management in privatized, former state-owned enterprises in transition economies to restructure their organization. Both internal forces promoting or inhibiting the restructuring process, and external constraints arising in the transition context are examined. A model and testable propositions are developed that explain post-privatization performance. Implications of our research point to the ways in which firms should manage and develop their resource base to transform to competitive enterprises.