Russia : Thoughts on the Privatization Debates a Decade Later
A decade has passed since the privatization debates concerning Russia and the other transition economies. This note reviews literature on two issues: the overall institutional change strategy, and the alternatives to and arguments against voucher p...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English,Russian en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/01/19574779/russia-thoughts-privatization-debates-decade-later-russia-thoughts-privatization-debates-decade-later http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19062 |
| Summary: | A decade has passed since the
privatization debates concerning Russia and the other
transition economies. This note reviews literature on two
issues: the overall institutional change strategy, and the
alternatives to and arguments against voucher privatization.
The alternative is a strategy of incremental institutional
change. Instead of an imagined great leap forward over the
chasm between socialism and capitalism, incentives are
devised to move people incrementally, but irreversibly, from
the existing quasi-reformed institutions towards the ideal
institutions. Instead of just negating the de facto property
rights of managers and workers, they can arrive at a nearby
set of legitimized de jure property rights by moving in the
right direction. The market bolsheviks designed the market
reforms based on voucher privatization with the exact
opposite purpose to deny the de facto property rights
accumulated during the communist past, to righteously wipe
the slate clean, and to start afresh with formal property rights. |
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