63 research outputs found
Objectives and Constraints of Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Small and Medium Size Enterprises in Russia and Bulgaria
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 important ones. The constraint on external financing is a particularly serious one and the SMEs use internal finance as a fall-back option. Our econometric analysis indicates that characteristics of the entrepreneur, firm and the firm's environment are important but varying determinants of which constraints are identified as the most important ones. Our results also suggest that the nature of disruption of production and of the financial constraints after the fall of central planning was more ubiquitous and all-encompassing in Russia than in Bulgaria.
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Using vouchers to privatize an economy: the Czech and Slovak case
The 1992 Czechoslovak privatization of state property has been widely heralded as one of the most impressive accomplishments in the economic transformation of the formerly communist economies. Before separating into two countries on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia undertook rapid large-scale privatization of state enterprises. A key element of the process was voucher privatization - the almost free distribution of vouchers to citizens who in turn used the vouchers to bid for shares in state enterprises. The design and implementation of the Czechoslovak voucher scheme has sparked a lively debate among academics and policy-makers in many countries. A small percentage of Russian enterprises has already been privatized through a different voucher scheme and other systems may be introduced in other transforming economies as well. While voucher privatization has an obvious popular appeal, many transitional economies have so far avoided it because of the perceived uncertainty about the process and its outcome. The iterative scheme used in Czechoslovakia is a relatively cumbersome procedure which has never been tried on a large scale before. The non-existence of supporting institutions and the inexperience of the participating citizens and officials also make it hard to assess its feasibility. The results of the 1992 Czechoslovak experiment are the first ones to reveal the behaviour of individual citizens, the investment privatization funds (IPFs) and the government authorities in the process of voucher privatization. As such, they are of significant academic as well as of policy interest.' In this paper we use data on the 1,491 enterprises which participated in the first wave of Czechoslovak voucher privatization to undertake an empirical analysis of (a) the demand of individual voucher holders and the IPFs for enterprise shares in the five rounds of bidding and (b) the price-setting behaviour of the authorities in these rounds. Since the data set contains all the firm-specific as well as more aggregate variables that were publicly available to the bidding individuals and IPFs, we can assess the importance of the various indicators for the bidding behaviour. Similarly, using the data that were available to the authorities, we are able to trace their complex price-setting behaviour and show that it can be very closely approximated by a relatively simple functional form
Recommended from our members
Using vouchers to privatize an economy: the Czech and Slovak case
The 1992 Czechoslovak privatization of state property has been widely heralded as one of the most impressive accomplishments in the economic transformation of the formerly communist economies. Before separating into two countries on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia undertook rapid large-scale privatization of state enterprises. A key element of the process was voucher privatization - the almost free distribution of vouchers to citizens who in turn used the vouchers to bid for shares in state enterprises. The design and implementation of the Czechoslovak voucher scheme has sparked a lively debate among academics and policy-makers in many countries. A small percentage of Russian enterprises has already been privatized through a different voucher scheme and other systems may be introduced in other transforming economies as well. While voucher privatization has an obvious popular appeal, many transitional economies have so far avoided it because of the perceived uncertainty about the process and its outcome. The iterative scheme used in Czechoslovakia is a relatively cumbersome procedure which has never been tried on a large scale before. The non-existence of supporting institutions and the inexperience of the participating citizens and officials also make it hard to assess its feasibility. The results of the 1992 Czechoslovak experiment are the first ones to reveal the behaviour of individual citizens, the investment privatization funds (IPFs) and the government authorities in the process of voucher privatization. As such, they are of significant academic as well as of policy interest.' In this paper we use data on the 1,491 enterprises which participated in the first wave of Czechoslovak voucher privatization to undertake an empirical analysis of (a) the demand of individual voucher holders and the IPFs for enterprise shares in the five rounds of bidding and (b) the price-setting behaviour of the authorities in these rounds. Since the data set contains all the firm-specific as well as more aggregate variables that were publicly available to the bidding individuals and IPFs, we can assess the importance of the various indicators for the bidding behaviour. Similarly, using the data that were available to the authorities, we are able to trace their complex price-setting behaviour and show that it can be very closely approximated by a relatively simple functional form
Recommended from our members
Objectives and constraints of entrepreneurs: evidence from small and medium size enterprises in Russia and Bulgaria
We analyze the principal objectives and constraints of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), using data from a survey of 437 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 important ones. The constraint on external financing is a particularly serious one, while payments for licenses or government services (insecure property rights) are not. Our analysis indicates that characteristics of the entrepreneur, the firm and the firm's environment are important but varying determinants of which constraints are most important. The nature of both the disruption of production and the financial constraints after the fall of planning also appears to have been more ubiquitous in Russia than in Bulgaria
Objectives and Constraints of Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Small and Medium Size Enterprises in Russia and Bulgaria
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 important ones. The constraint on external financing is a particularly serious one and the SMEs use internal finance as a fall-back option. Our econometric analysis indicates that characteristics of the entrepreneur, firm and the firm's environment are important but varying determinants of which constraints are identified as the most important ones. Our results also suggest that the nature of disruption of production and of the financial constraints after the fall of central planning was more ubiquitous and all-encompassing in Russia than in Bulgaria.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39730/3/wp346.pd
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Enterprise Breakups and Performance During the Transition from Plan to Market
Using firm-level data, we estimate the effects of the major wave of 1991 breakups of Czechoslovak state-owned enterprises on the subsequent performance of the ‘master enterprises’ and spun-off divisions. We estimate the performance effects of spinoffs by comparing the performance of enterprises that remained intact throughout the 1990–1992 period to the performance of the master enterprises that experienced spinoffs and the newly spun-off subsidiaries. Our estimates suggest that the breakups had a significant immediate effect on the productive efficiency and on the profitability of industrial firms in 1991, and that the effect became much less significant in 1992. The effect is a negative function of the size of the spinoff, being positive for small to slightly above average-sized spinoffs and negative for very large ones. We cannot reject the hypothesis that the estimated effect was identical for the spun-off subsidiaries and the master enterprises that experienced the spinoffs. Our 1991 estimates suggest that the large firms created under the centrally planned system suffered from inefficiencies that were alleviated by the breakups. The 1992 estimates are consistent with increased competition and the appropriation of profits by managers
Enterprise Restructuring and Performance in the Transition
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39405/3/wp13.pd
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