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Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The State‐Led Transition To Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, And Social Structural Explanations Of Poland’S Economic Success, Lawrence P. King, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee Nov 2006

The State‐Led Transition To Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, And Social Structural Explanations Of Poland’S Economic Success, Lawrence P. King, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee

Political Science Faculty Publications

Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western-style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world-systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland’s relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownership and an interventionist state employing various industrial policy tools that facilitated efficiency-enhancing market-oriented restructuring before ushering in beneficial foreign direct investment. The resulting capitalist system closely resembles the typical pattern found in most late industrializers.


Wages, Layoffs, And Privatization: Evidence From Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Volodymyr Vakhitov Feb 2006

Wages, Layoffs, And Privatization: Evidence From Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Volodymyr Vakhitov

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper estimates the effects of privatization on worker separations and wages using retrospective data from a national probability sample of Ukrainian households. Detailed worker characteristics are used to control for compositional differences and to assess types of observable "winners" and "losers" from privatization. Preprivatization worker-firm matches are used to control for unobservables in worker and firm selection. The results imply that privatization reduces wages by 5 percent and cuts the layoff probability in half. Outside investor ownership reduces separations but leaves wages unaffected. Winners from privatization tend to be higher-skilled employees of larger firms, but there is no discernible …


Does Privatization Hurt Workers? Lessons From Comprehensive Manufacturing Firm Panel Data In Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy Feb 2006

Does Privatization Hurt Workers? Lessons From Comprehensive Manufacturing Firm Panel Data In Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the effects of privatization on firm-level wages and employment in four transition economies. Applied to longitudinal data on manufacturing firms, our fixed effect and random trend models consistently fail to support workers' fears of job losses from privatization, and they never imply large negative effects on wages; only for domestic privatization in Hungary and Russia are small (3-5%) negative wage effects found. Privatization to foreign investors has positive estimated impacts on both employment and wages in all four countries. The negligible consequences of domestic privatization for workers result from effects on scale, productivity, and costs that are large …


Privatizing Public Enterprises In The European Union 1960-2002: Ideological, Pragmatic, Inevitable?, Judith Clifton, Daniel Díaz-Fuentes, Francisco Comín Jan 2006

Privatizing Public Enterprises In The European Union 1960-2002: Ideological, Pragmatic, Inevitable?, Judith Clifton, Daniel Díaz-Fuentes, Francisco Comín

Judith Clifton

Privatization, recognized as one of the most important economic policy reforms from the 1970s, has attracted significant attention from scholars, and the literature on the topic is now vast. Yet there is little agreement on the reasons why governments privatized. Three dominant paradigms explaining European Union (EU) privatization put forward distinct motivations. The ‘British paradigm’ assumed that market-friendly ideology played a significant role in a path towards a global programme inspired by the UK experience. The ‘multiple logics’ approach observed that the UK was an anomaly, not a leader, and that EU privatization was so diverse that there were few, …


Effects Of Eu Accession On The Politics Of Privatization - The Steel Sector In Comparative Perspective, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee Jan 2006

Effects Of Eu Accession On The Politics Of Privatization - The Steel Sector In Comparative Perspective, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee

Political Science Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the European Union (EU) accession process on the restructuring and privatization of the steel sector of the four largest steel producers in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), namely Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia. The outcome to date for these countries' steel mills has been relatively uniform in that they have been integrated into the global production networks of some of the largest multinational steel enterprises. The pressures which brought this outcome about, however, were far from uniform. The variability in the modes of convergence is highlighted by …


Employment And Wage Effects Of Privatization: Evidence From Transition Economies, John S. Earle Jan 2006

Employment And Wage Effects Of Privatization: Evidence From Transition Economies, John S. Earle

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.