During transition, maintaining employment and providing a social safety net to the unemployed are important to social stability, which in turn is crucial for the productivity of the whole economy. Because independent institutions for social safety are lacking and firms with strong profit...

A substantial body of literature has documented impressive total factor productivity (TFP) growth in China's state owned enterprises (SOEs) during the period of China's enterprise reform. Such growth rates have been used to support the view that China's reforms of SOEs have been highly...

Why has the rapid privatization of firms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union not brought dramatically higher performance as expected? If private ownership were so clearly dominant, why has state control of enterprises been such a common phenomenon historically, even in many Western...