Using vouchers to privatize an economy: the Czech and Slovak case

作者：Jan Švejnar, Miroslav Singer · 发表于：Economics of Transition · 年份：1994 · DOI：10.1111/j.1468-0351.1994.tb00103.x · 被引用次数：59 · 研究领域：Economic and Fiscal Studies、Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth、Local Government Finance and Decentralization

The 1992 Czechoslovak privatization of state property has been widely heralded as one of the most impressive accomplishments in the economic transformation of the formerly communist economies. Before separating into two countries on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia undertook rapid large-scale privatization of state enterprises. A key element of the process was voucher privatization - the almost free distribution of vouchers to citizens who in turn used the vouchers to bid for shares in state enterprises. The design and implementation of the Czechoslovak voucher scheme has sparked a lively debate among academics and policy-makers in many countries. A small percentage of Russian enterprises has already been privatized through a different voucher scheme and other systems may be introduced in other transforming economies as well. While voucher privatization has an obvious popular appeal, many transitional economies have so far avoided it because of the perceived uncertainty about the process and its outcome. The iterative scheme used in Czechoslovakia is a relatively cumbersome procedure which has never been tried on a large scale before. The non-existence of supporting institutions and the inexperience of the participating citizens and officials also make it hard to assess its feasibility. The results of the 1992 Czechoslovak experiment are the first ones to reveal the behaviour of individual citizens, the investment privatization funds (IPFs) and the government authorities in th...