Housing Privatization in Transition Countries: Institutional Features and Outcomes

Abstract

We provide an overview of housing privatization policies and outcomes in transition economies. Our primary aim is to collect and systematize key information concerning the institutional features of housing privatization in individual countries: we identify the initial conditions, the timeframe of housing privatization and its culmination, the extent of housing privatization, who decided about its terms and conditions, who was entitled to privatize the housing, and at what price. Furthermore, using micro-data covering all transition countries, we present new estimates of the extent of housing privatization, its dynamics during the second half of the 2000s, and the resulting housing tenure structure.

Homeownership, Political Participation, and Social Capital in Post‐Communist Countries and Western Europe

“…Because housing privatization also occurred in the Western European countries, we estimate the same models for them and report the results for completeness. However, we note that privatization in Western Europe does not provide as good a quasi‐experiment as in the post‐communist region (Broulíková and Montag, forthcoming).…”

“…Recent studies suggest that homeownership may produce significant social costs as well as social benefits. In terms of social costs, it is argued that the lower mobility of homeowners may directly or indirectly increase unemployment rates (for recent contributions, see Blanchflower and Oswald, , and Broulíková, Huber, Montag, and Sunega, ). With respect to the social benefits, a number studies document the positive association of homeownership with political participation and social capital formation (DiPasquale and Glaeser ; Hilber ), life satisfaction (Rossi and Weber ; Zumbro ), self‐assessed health (Aizawa and Helble ; Rossi and Weber ), and children’s educational outcomes (Aaronson ; Green and White ; Haurin, Parcel, and Haurin ).…”

“…In this paper, we follow the identification strategy recently developed by Broulíková et al () who argue that privatization in the post‐communist countries created an exogenous assignment of homeownership status that can be used to study its causal effects. This paper is thus the first that uses housing privatization to identify the effects of homeownership on political participation and social capital.…”

Thirty years of economic transition in the former Soviet Union: Microeconomic and institutional dimensions

“…On the contrary, housing privatization was carried out relatively quickly at the beginning of the 1990s (Struyk and Daniell, 1995;Broulikova and Montag, 2020).…”

An analysis of experiences and meanings that community members have attached to the South African government’s neoliberal and privatisation policies in historically disadvantaged suburbs.

“…In Western Europe, the doing away with government assistance for citizens in need of housing was supported by an ideological turn to the right, and also served as an attempt to decrease the government's expenses by reducing its financial responsibilities. In Eastern Europe, the privatisation of housing was introduced some years later as a result of the changes brought about by the collapse of Communism (Broulikova & Montag, 2020). In Britain, the first steps to privatise housing occurred during the latter parts of 1970s, after Margaret Thatcher and her conservative party had risen to power (Marais et al, 2008).…”