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Since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, there has been a growing interest among policy makers towards the more active role of the state in the enterprise sector. This book provides valuable insight into the changing role of state-owned enterprises in economic policy, a topic at the cross section of three interrelated, but usually independent research streams: transition research, varieties of capitalism literature and patterns of state ownership (institutionalism). With the existing literature on state ownership concentrating on the developed economies and on selected emerging economies, this book fills an important gap in focusing on the post-communist transition countries. The Polish experience is looked at in a comparative perspective of selected transition countries, which deserve special attention as they had to cope with a radical change of their economic policies towards the enterprise sector. This book will be valuable reading for academics in economic policy, transition economics, and institutional economics, and policy makers and practitioners in EU bodies and emerging economies.

The article is devoted to the evolution of ownership policy of the Polish state in the course of the post-communist transition. The author argues that this policy is characterized by growing fiscalization i.e., treating public property mainly from a short-term fiscal perspective: as a source of finance for the current government's policies. It manifests itself in resignation from privatization as a strategic tool of economic transition and from state owner's policy as a tool for overcoming imperfections of market mechanisms. The observed trends pose serious threat both at macro and micro levels, e.g. to the coherence and efficacy of the economic policy of the state and to competitiveness and development prospects of the state-controlled companies. This policy evolution has a long-term character and is to a large extent independent from official rhetoric of subsequent governments and ruling coalitions. ; Artykuł jest poświęcony ewolucji polityki własnościowej państwa polskiego w toku transformacji postkomunistycznej. Autor stara się udowodnić tezę, że charakteryzuje się ona rosnącą fiskalizacją, czyli traktowaniem własności państwowej, głównie z krótkookresowej perspektywy fiskalnej, jako źródła finansowania bieżącej polityki państwa. Przejawia się to w rezygnacji z prywatyzacji jako strategicznego narzędzia transformacji gospodarczej i z polityki właścicielskiej jako narzędzia do przezwyciężenia niedoskonałości mechanizmów rynkowych. Zaobserwowane trendy stwarzają poważne zagrożenia na szczeblu tak mikro, jak i makro, m.in. dla spójności i skuteczności polityki gospodarczej oraz konkurencyjności i perspektyw rozwojowych spółek kontrolowanych przez Skarb Państwa. Zaobserwowana ewolucja polityki własnościowej ma długoterminowy charakter i tylko w niewielkim stopniu zależy od oficjalnej retoryki kolejnych rządów i koalicji rządzących.

The paper discusses the role of the state in shaping an economic system which is, in line with the welfare economics approach, capable of performing socially important functions and achieving socially desirable results. We describe this system through a set of indexes: the IHDI, the World Happiness Index, and the Satisfaction of Life index. The characteris-tics of the state are analyzed using a set of variables which describe both the quantitative (government size, various types of governmental expenditures, and regulatory burden) and qualitative (institutional setup and property rights protection) aspects of its functioning. The study examines the "old" and "new" member states of the European Union, the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and Asia, and the economies of Latin America. The main conclusion of the research is that the institutional quality of the state seems to be the most important for creation of a socially effective economic system, while the level of state interventionism plays, at most, a secondary and often negligible role. Geographical differentiation is also discovered, as well as the lack of a direct correlation between the characteristics of an economic system and the subjective feeling of well-being. These re-sults may corroborate the neo-institutionalist hypothesis that noneconomic factors, such as historical, institutional, cultural, and even genetic factors, may play an important role in making the economic system capable to perform its tasks; this remains an area for future research.

After a long period in which state-led development was the dominant economic paradigm, since the 1980s private sector development has been the focus for economic policy makers. It is probably no coincidence that economic growth, stagnant for a few decades in much of the developing world, took off in the 1990s after this policy shift, and has generally remained high (in spite of a wave of crises and recessions in the late 1990s and early 2000s). Privatization has made a great deal of progress in the developing world, particularly in Latin America, though the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have lagged somewhat. One of the main lessons for privatization policy makers in MENA countries from the experience in other regions is that merely transferring assets from the state to the private sector is not enough to ensure improved social welfare; competition and the institutional environment are also very important. With respect to the latter, much attention has focused in recent years on improvements in the business environment, which are necessary to spur entrepreneurship and encouragement movement from the informal economy into the formal sector. In this area the post-communist countries have been leaders; while Latin America and the MENA region have also seen significant improvement, they still lag behind the new European Union member states as well as some of the post-Soviet states (although the MENA region performs very well with respect to the protection of property rights). The area where the MENA region needs improvement most drastically is in the financial sector. Although rich in savings, it performs very poorly in these countries with respect to the provision of credit to the private sector (particularly small and medium-sized enterprises), largely due to the insufficient level of competition in the sector. We conclude with some speculation regarding possible scenarios for development between now and 2030.