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ABSTRACT
This paper confronts the results of the theoretical research on enterprise behaviour in transition economies with the evidence for enterprise restructuring in a number of CEECs. The paper draws on microeconomic, industry-level and macroeconomic information to investigate the mechanisms of enterprise restructuring in transition economies, its outcomes in terms of industry-level export performance and its interaction with macroeconomic policy and constraints. The aim is to throw light on the process by which catch-up is taking place in the leading transition economies. We begin at the micro level and find that institutional changes have produced improvements in performance more or less in line with theoretical predictions. Variation in the extent of policy changes helps to account for cross-country differences in restructuring behaviour. In the leading transition countries where growth has been underway for a number of years, many features of the enterprise sector differentiate it from that of an advanced market economy. To measure the extent of catch-up associated with the reforms, use is made of detailed information about the quality of goods traded on the EU market. In the final section, the inclusion of macroeconomic constraints allows distinctive transition paths to catching up in the Visegrád countries to be identified.
Keywords: enterprise restructuring; transition economies; Central and Eastern Europe
JEL Classification: D21, D23, G3, P52, O57
WIIW Research Report No. 240, W. Carlin and M. Landesmann: From
Theory into Practice? Corporate Restructuring and Economic Dynamism in
Transition Economies, August 1997, 44 pp. including 7 Tables &
1 Figure, US$ 24.00/ATS 300.00
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