The article examines economic, political, and institutional determinants of privatization using a panel of 50 countries over the period of 1988-2006. Our sample includes developed, developing, and transition economies. Privatization activity is measured by the number of privatization deals as well as the revenue raised and analyzed using the negative binomial regression and Tobit regression respectively. Although more privatization activity is usually taking place in countries displaying satisfactory economic performance in some respect, the role of economic factors turns out to be limited. The results identify a number of political and institutional determinants but some effects are specific to a particular type of economy. For example, in developing countries, right-wing governments are associated with privatizations while new, not necessarily right-wing governments, are behind privatization in Eastern Europe. The role of financial development is also varied, with sound financial institutions related to successful privatization in developed and developing countries but not in transition economies.

This paper reports an analysis of the determinants of the level and changes in Polish industrial concentration in the early post-transition era. In particular, the relative effects of foreign and state ownership are examined. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 144 Polish manufacturing industries over the period 1989–1993. The results suggest that both state and foreign ownership have a significant impact on industry concentration and this relationship is U-shaped. Minimum efficient scale is found to be the only other factor to impact on industry concentration. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2005Post-transition, Foreign direct investment, State ownership, Industry concentration, L11, F23,

No abstract

FDI motivation, foreign acquisition, transition,

This article uses the sequencing of privatization to infer the objective pursued by the Polish government in the privatization of its large manufacturing firms in the second half of the 1990s. We construct a model of mixed oligopoly and use it to evaluate the privatization process; our analysis is based on the assumption that firms which furthered the government's objective function the most would be chosen to be privatized first. Based on the features of the firms that were chosen for early privatization, our empirical analysis suggests that welfare maximization was more important than the desire to maximize the revenues from privatization and the government's budget or to minimize employment losses.JEL classifications: D63, L33, P35.1 Authors thank a referee of this journal for many helpful comments on an earlier draft. 532De Fraja and Roberts