The recent privatization of state-owned enterprises in the Czech Republic forms a natural experiment to test and compare the predictive ability of the resource-based view (RBV) against the ...market-based view (MBV) under conditions of great change. It has been recognized in the literature that, under normal stable circumstances, a firm's internal resources and its external market power are fundamentally intertwined. Consequently, it is difficult to identify the relative roles of these two theories in explaining expected firm performance and firm value. However, when market conditions are in a state of flux, as in the case of the Czech Republic in 1992, we expect the firm's resources to be the primary determinants of firm value. In order to test this notion, an RBV model was developed, based on a set of firm features reflecting the rare and valuable ability to compete in the emerging capitalistic economy (as opposed to the currently prevailing bureaucratically planned economy). A contrasting MBV model was also developed, highlighting the role of market power in this regard. These models were assessed in a cross-sectional sample of 988 Czech firms undergoing privatization. The empirical findings show that the RBV-driven variables are remarkably better at explaining share values of Czech firms in the period of privatization than MBV-driven variables. These results underscore the role of firm resources as a primary determinant of firm value in rapidly changing environments.
The following study, integrating public choice theory and evolutionary game theory, develops a predator-prey model with intelligent design to explain the "evolutionaryinstitutional perspective" that ...is a well-accepted premise in transitional economics. In the model, growth-oriented central government leaders are intelligent designers of institutional change, provincial and local officials are potential predators, and private firms are potential prey. The model finds that reductions in discriminatory policies are the major institutional contributors to China's market miracle, whereas improvements in the rule of law and in the protection of private property rights are not needed for short-run economic growth.
Abstract
This paper introduces the readers to Neo-Transitional Economics – a volume which aspires to reinvigorate scholarly interest in transition economics research. The classical transition ...storyline is briefly revisited, and new directions for empirical and policy-relevant research that target post-transition economies in the post-crisis paradigm are highlighted.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Polish society experienced deep political, economic and social changes. The aim of the study is to investigate whether changes that occurred in Poland during the ...transformation significantly influenced the risk of hypertension among adult men. We find that irrespective of age, marital status, education, degree of urbanization, lifestyle variables (smoking, drinking alcohol, and physical activity), and BMI the risk of hypertension after 1989 was higher than before transformation (odds ratio
=
1.45,
p
<
0.001). Psychosocial factors are proposed as factors which might at least partly explain the higher risk of hypertension during the first years of economic transition in Poland.
The strategic fit paradigm, originally derived from observations in market-based economies, asserts that an appropriate match between environment and strategy has significant and positive ...implications for business performance. Based on a random sample of Chinese electronics firms, this study systematically examines the applicability of the strategic fit paradigm in China’s centrally planned economy in transition. Results indicate that while environment-strategy coalignment is evident, coalignment only improves performance under certain environmental conditions.
Dans les économies en transition, un mode de gouvernance hybride - le mode de gouvernance clanique – désigne l’interaction de l’entreprise avec son environnement insitutionnel à travers la ...participation à la politique. Il est caractérisé par la socialisation, la prédominance des pratiques informels et des facteurs non marchands. Il constitue une réaction de la part de l’entreprise à son environnement institutionnel évolutif et turbulent. En Ukraine, les relations entre l’entreprise et les pouvoirs publics sont fondées sur le clientélisme à travers l’échange de ressources. Les entreprises mobilisent leurs ressources politiques sous forme de votes de leurs employés en faveur des partis. En échange, l’entreprise obtient des décideurs politiques une régulation favorable avec une rente sous forme de subvention. Cette thèse cherche à prouver l’existence d’un lien entre les ressources politiques et les ressources économiques de l’entreprise. Les entreprises investissent des ressources disponibles dans l’activité politique pour obtenir des bénéfices. L’activité politique peut être vue par l’entreprise comme une activité profitable. La recherche de la rente constitue modus operandi du mode de gouvernance clanique qui permet d’assurer le fonctionnement efficient de l’entreprise dans un environnement d’affaires particulier. L’informel constitue une autre caractéristique de ce mode de gouvernance. Les échanges de ressources politiques avec les pouvoirs publics sont faits à travers des réseaux sociaux informels dont la configuration permet de définir le périmètre des structures claniques.
In transitional economies, a hybrid mode of corporate governance – the clanic mode – refers to the interaction between the firm and its institutional environment through its participation in politics. It is characterized by socialization, predominance of informal practice and non market factors. It constitutes a recation of the firm towards its evolutive and turbulent institutional environment. In Ukraine, the relations between the firm and the authorities are based on clientelism through an exchange of resources. The firm deploys their political resources represented by votes of their employees in favor of political parties. It obtains form policymakers a favorable regulation through a rent provided via subventions.This thesis seeks to prove the existence of the relation between corporate political and economic resources. The firm invests available resources to obtain benefits. Political activity can be seen as profitable. Rent-seeking constitutes modus operandi of the clanic governance that allows to the firm to operate efficiently in a specific business environment. This mode of governance is also characterized by informal practices. The exchange of resources with policy-makers is made through informal networks whose configuration defines the perimeter of clanic structures.
This paper has four related themes. It demonstrates that Marx's Communism in its first or Socialist phase would recognize the essential inequality of labour on grounds of efficiency and growth. It ...offers an explanation for the apparent paradox that Marx and Engels championed a fully-fledged control system notwithstanding appreciation of the allocation functions of a competitive market system. It highlights common ground relating to market process between Marx and Engels and the modern "classical liberals" Mises and Hayek. And it traces the evolutionary nature of the Marx-Engels perspective on transitions between and within economic systems. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Economists frequently confine themselves to the qualitative analysis of continuous optimization problems or they restrict their quantitative analysis to inaccurate methods like linearization around ...the steady state. The fact that the solution is characterized by an inherently unstable adjustment path arriving at a boundary value in infinite time, however, does not necessarily imply a complicated solution method. The paper explains and demonstrates the method of backward integration, a recursive solution method that does not only reveal the exact adjustment path but that is also very easy to use.
Quantitative aspects of adjustment processes in economic growth remain frequently unsolved or are tackled with bulky or inaccurate methods like multiple shooting or log-linearization. Mulligan's ...(1991) method of time elimination, however, has improved the analysis of saddle path dynamics in both, efficiency and simplicity. We show the inadequacy of multiple shooting methods for the analysis of deterministic continuous time infinite horizon optimization problems. The main part of the presents arefinement of the time elimination method and the methods of reversed time and reversed slope. All approaches are built on the one idea of transforming a numerically inherent instable boundary value problem into an inherent stable initial value problem. This yields easy to handle computational methods for finding the exact time path for economies in transition. The main purpose of the paper, however, is not to present genuinely new ideas but to motivate researchers and students to examine transitional dynamics by explaning how easy all this can be done.
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