Are Rushed Privatizations Substandard?

Jan Svejnar

“We provide the first analysis of whether “rushed privatizations” of state-owned enterprises, often carried out under fiscal duress and sometimes in collaboration with external institutions (such as IMF, ECB and EC, as in e.g., Greece), increase or decrease firms’ efficiency, scale of operation and employment. Using panel data from Poland’s census of firms with fifty or more full time equivalent employees over 1995-2015, we show that rushed privatization has negative efficiency, scale and employment effects relative to standard (non-rushed) privatization. Rushed privatization is also associated with a higher incidence of subsequent asset stripping, mass layoffs, asset stripping with mass layoffs, ownership changes, and a lower incidence of bankruptcies. Our results suggest that when policy makers consider carrying out rushed privatization, they ought to take these effects into account”.

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About the speaker:

Jan Svejnar is the Richard N. Gardner Professor of Economics and International Affairs and Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University. He focuses his research on (i) the effects of government policies on firms, labor and capital markets; (ii) corporate, national, and global governance and performance; and (iii) entrepreneurship, innovation and investment.

Professor Svejnar is also a founder and Chairman of CERGE-EI in Prague (an American-style MA-PhD program in economics that educates economists for Central-East Europe and the Newly Independent States). He is a Fellow of the European Economic Association and Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research (London) and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn. From 1992 to 1997, Professor Svejnar served as the Founding Director of the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He also served as Co-Director of the Transition Programme at the Center for Economic Policy Research in London, President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, editor of the Economics of Transition, Governing Board member of the European Economic Association, and Economic Advisor to President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. He was honored with a Neuron Prize for lifelong achievement from the Karel Janeček Endowment for Research and Science in 2012 and the 2015 IZA Prize in Labor Economics from the Institute for the Study of Labor. In 2008 he was one of two presidential candidates in the Czech Republic.