There has been a substantial shift from public housing to voucher-based housing assistance over the past decade, largely in response to the rising cost of public housing and the high rates of crime, unemployment and school failure among public housing residents. Despite this shift, there is...

We explore an overlooked aspect of the design of the Czech voucher privatization programme, namely, the consequences of allowing individuals to distribute their vouchers among the voucher privatization funds (VPFs). We develop and analyse a model of voucher privatization in which we study the...

Voucher privatisation that proceeded in the Czech Republic in the 1990s was a realisation of a unique experiment which resulted in the transfer of almost half of state-owned enterprises to private hands within two years. A substantial part of these private hands was represented by intermediaries...

We use a total of 1171 estimates extracted from 34 previous studies and perform a meta-analysis to examine the relationship between ownership structures and firm performance in the Czech mass-privatized firms. We find that, in contrast to the remarkable effect of foreign ownership on firm...

The most likely outcome of the strategy of voucher privatization with investment funds may be a two-sided grab fest by fund managers and enterprise managers-along with drift, stagnation, and decapitalization of the privatized industrial sector.Common wisdom among post-socialist reformers has...

This study develops a dynamic model of bidding behavior to investigate the Czech voucher privatization process, which took place in two waves of bidding rounds, the first in 1992 and the second in 1994. It examines the voucher mechanism from the standpoint of investors and the pricing and...

The aim of this paper is to test the permanent income hypothesis on Czech voucher privatization. This form of privatization moved state assets to households and represented an unexpected windfall gain for participants of the privatization scheme. Whether the windfall was consumed or saved is...

The paper analyses the investment behaviour of individual investors and privatization funds if the first wave of the voucher privatization using Czech data. It first summarizes privatization methods applied in the case of the Czech Republic and the rules of voucher privatization. Then a simple...

The natural experiment of voucher privatization in the Czech Republic is used to test whether prices that were adjusted in a limited number of discrete steps based primarily on the extent of excess demand or supply are able to fully reflect both public and private information. Early in the...

A fundamental question in economics since the 1930s has been whether an administrative price system could simulate the results of perfect competition even without a true market for the means of production. The theoretical possibility of such a system has been known since the introduction of...

Learning is a subject of intense research in experimental economics. We contribute to this debate by presenting persuasive evidence that learning took place among uninformed heterogeneous agents on a quasi-stock market during a large-scale natural experiment that by size, incentives, and...

We analyze the effect of ownership on post-privatization performance in a virtually complete population od medium and large firms privatized in a model large-scale privatization economy (Czech Republic). We find that concentrated foreign ownership improves economic performance, but domestic...

We analyze the effect of ownership on post-privatization performance in a virtually complete population of medium and large firms privatized in a model large-scale privatization economy (Czech Republic). We find that concentrated foreign ownership improves economic performance, but domestic...

In 1992 the Czech Republic privatized state assets, which resulted in some citizens receiving an unexpected windfall. Whether the windfall was consumed or saved provides a clear test of the permanent income hypothesis in a transitional economy. Analysis of data from a survey conducted...

There has been a substantial shift from public housing to voucher-based housing assistance over the past decade, largely in response to the rising cost of public housing and the high rates of crime, unemployment and school failure among public housing residents. Despite this shift, there is...

A fundamental question in economics since the 1930s has been whether an administrative price system could simulate the results of perfect competition even without a true market for the means of production. The theoretical possibility of such a system has been known since the introduction of...

We explore an overlooked aspect of the design of the Czech voucher privatization programme, namely, the consequences of allowing individuals to distribute their vouchers among the voucher privatization funds (VPFs). We develop and analyse a model of voucher privatization in which we study the...

Following the alleged "success" in Czechoslovakia, voucher privatization with investment funds became the form of privatization favored across the transition economies from Mongolia to Slovenia by the "Washington consensus" and by the most prominent and vocal western economic advisors. But the...

This paper evaluates the impact of privatization on the development of capital markets in a two-country general equilibrium model. We draw particular attention to two divestment techniques, share issue privatizations (in developed market systems) and voucher privatizations (in transition...

This paper evaluates the impact of privatization on the development of capital markets in a two-country general equilibrium model. We draw particular attention to two divestment techniques, share issue privatizations (in developed market systems) and voucher privatizations (in transition...

This is a study of the determinants of share pricing and demand in the path-breaking Czech voucher-based multiple-round mass privatization auction. The results presented here document that share valuation and demand in this auction were based on firm characteristics such as return on sales,...

The natural experiment of voucher privatization in the Czech Republic is used to test whether prices that were adjusted in a limited number of discrete steps based primarily on the extent of excess demand or supply are able to fully reflect both public and private information. The eventual...

The Czech voucher privatisation scheme has long been the subject of debate among foreign commentators, both lawyers and economists. After initial (and, for that matter, almost universal) approval, the programme has gradually fallen from grace with most writers as its destructive effects on the...

Privatization was the fundamental pillar of transition from plan to market in former socialist countries. But little is known about the fate of companies that were privatized in large scale privatization schemes such as mass privatization or management-employee buyouts. This is the first...