Investment funds play a key role in mass privatization in many transition economies. But have they lived up to expectations? The authors look at that question in the two earliest and best-known cases--Russia and the Czech Republic. The evidence is discouraging. It appears that the funds have...

Twenty years after the fall of the iron curtain - which for decades had separated East from West - most countries of Central and Eastern Europe are now members of the European Union; some have even adopted the euro. Nonetheless, these countries have also remained exceptionally vulnerable to...