Title: Property rights issues in economic reforms in socialist countries
Abstract: Many accounts of privatization in democratic, market-oriented countries stress the role played by mechanisms of political accountability. These processes, the story goes, induce political decisionmakers intermittently to take public-regarding steps, and in many cases the transfer of property and functions from the state to the private sector benefits the general welfare rather than specific interest groups [Cass (1988); Donahue (1989); Vickers and Yarrow, (1988)]. But then what explains privatization in Soviet-type economies? Does the surrender of state control over the economy in those countries stem primarily from a conversion to a new faith about how to attain a good and just society? If so, what brought about this conversion? In particular, were élites in Soviet-type societies more public-regarding than their counterparts in the West, even though they did not face electoral discipline? If not, then to what extent does the privatization process in these countries reflect rent seeking by discrete groups, and how does such rent seeking affect the privatization process? What aspects of this process are distinctive to Soviet-type economies? This paper addresses these questions.
Publication Year: 1988
Publication Date: 1988-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 50
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