Suchergebnisse

Monetary restraint in Poland does not operate in the expected manner under the conditions of predominant state ownership of both banks and industrial enterprises. With effective owners' control being prohibitively costly in the state-owned firms, "nobody's" banks continue their old lending pattern to large state-owned enterprises regardless of the latters' creditworthiness and profitability. "Nobody's" enterprises accustomed to soft budget constraint are not deterred by high interest rate levels. Under these circumstances macroeconomic restraint does not select the best enterprises but in fact does the reverse: Least efficient large enterprises survive, while smaller but more efficient ones starved of credits are threatened with bankruptcy. Inability to cope effectively with the legacy of the Soviet-type economy is compounded by autonomous policy errors. Apart from too nervous reactions to monthly changes in the inflation rate, the major mistake has been the timing and scale of tightening monetary policy. The sharp increases in the interest rate were effected almost weeks before the major demand reduction for Polish products resulting from the expected changes in trade with the Soviet Union. As a result the economy received a strong recessionary blow from monetary policy that preceded another major blow from the fall in foreign demand. Inevitably the economy went into a recession that did not end by June 1991 while inflation continued.

Regardless of one's stand on the privatisation issue, there is certainly one point on which all protagonists and antagonists of privatisation agree. This is the political importance of the issue in question. Privatisation part of the transition to the market system is a major political, nor only economic change. Therefore, it should be analysed not only in economic but also in political terms. Politics, or, more precisely, political economy of privatisation is, then, a legitimate - and highly relevant - topic of analysis. Preferences and interests of various actors (public and private ones), ways of articulating these preferences and interests, actors' interaction with the political system, etc., all impinge upon privatisation process and outcomes. Also, the political environment within which the transition has been taking place is of great significance to privatisation. Finally, since transition away from the centrally planned, Soviet-type economy is without precedent, any expectations with respect to both process and outcomes have to be based upon privatisation experience elsewhere. It is this experience that the present writer will look into, first in order to form preliminary expectations about the political economy of privatisation in Poland. First section deals, then, with political economy of privatisation in post-Soviet-type economies (post-STEs for short) in comparison with that in developing countries (LDCs for short).

Poland and Hungary, the most persistent tinkerers with the Soviet economic system, became also the first communist countries to have allowed debates on the need to rearrange the structure of property rights in the economy as a way to improve its performance. Elsewhere, until the end of the 1980s, these debates were either explicitely rejected (as in Czechoslovakia or former G.D.R.) or much more limited (as in the USSR under Gorbachev). In what follows, the present writer will explain the politico-economic context, within which these debates were taking place, and will outline major options proposed there. Moving from minor to major changes formulated in the debate, I begin by presenting some proposals that kept the status of state ownership unchanged, and later evaluate further reaching ones. Also, these options, or most of them, had their predecessors in earlier debates in the West. Therefore, wherever important, linkages to these debates have been made as well.

Can perestroika be made to work in the Soviet Union? Jan Winiecki of the University of Warsaw, suggests that easy optimism may be misplaced.

How can socialist economies make the transition to the free market? Jan Winiecki, of the University of Warsaw, explains some of the difficulties and concludes that reform in the Soviet Union may only be achieved after a military coup.

THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS WHY ECONOMIC REFORMS FAIL UNDER SOVIET-TYPE SYSTEMS DESPITE THE EFFORTS OF THE RULERS TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF THEIR AILING ECONOMIES. APPLYING A PROPERTY-RIGHTS APPROACH, HE POINTS TO THE FACT THAT ALL SEGMENTS OF THE RULING STRATUM BENEFIT FROM MAINTAINING AN UNDEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SYSTEM. PARTY APPARATCHIKS AND ECONOMIC BUREAUCRATS ALSO BENEFIT FROM THE PERSISTENT INTERFERENCE IN THE PATENTLY INEFFICIENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM. THEREFORE, THEY ARE MOST INTERESTED IN MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO IN THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. MOREOVER, SINCE THE RULERS TURN TO THE BUREAUCRATS TO DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT REFORMS, THEIR OPPORTUNITIES FOR PREVENTING, DISTORTING, AND/OR ABORTING REFORMS ARE GREAT.

This article sketches briefly an answer to the question of why economic reforms fail under the Soviet-type system in spite of the obvious interest of the respective ruling groups in improving the performance of their ailing economies. The author, applying a property-rights approach, points to the fact that all segments of the ruling stratum benefit from maintaining an undemocratic political system, but party apparatchiks and economic bureaucrats benefit also from the persistent interference in the patently inefficient economic system. Therefore they are most interested in maintaining the status quo in the economic system as well. Moreover, since the rulers turn to them for the design and implementation of reforms, their chances for preventing, distorting, and/or aborting reforms are all the greater.

Why do East European economies have such over‐large manufacturing sectors? Jan Winiecki, of the Institute of Labour Economics in Warsaw, argues that this characteristic of 19th century economies is caused by defects in the framework within which industry operates.

Why is it so difficult to reform the economies of Eastern Europe? Jan Winiecki, of the Institute of Labour Economics in Warsaw, argues that the decline of moral standards under communism means that reform can only be brought about by people untainted by the old regime.

How egalitarian are workers in eastern Europe? Jan Winiecki of the Institute for Labour Economics in Warsaw, argues that opposition to reform is based on fear that cosmetic reforms will only reinforce the inefficiencies of the current system rather than egalitarianism.