Privatization of the post-socialist economies, including the transfer of state assets to other proprietors, new start ups and green field investments has produced a wide variety of ownership structures in Central and Eastern Europe. One of the main question discussed in recent years concerns the basic characteristics of the post-socialist ownership. Are the new structures peculiar as compared to recent Western market economies, as several researchers argue (Stark 1996, Earle and Estrin 1997, Andreff 1998)? Is the dominant form some kind of recombinant property, i.e. a mixture of state and private ownership, dominated by inter-organizational (corporate) shareholders (Stark 1996, Stark and Kemény 1997)? Or we face a model of managerial capitalism, as Szelényi-Eyal-Townsley (1996) suggest?
This paper analyses the Hungarian case that seems to be rather special in comparison to other post-socialist countries - but not peculiar in comparison to some other market economies. We will argue that the basic features of the ownership structure in big enterprise sector are not dominated by specific institutional solutions. If there are some specific features, they include mainly quantitative aspects (like the concentration of assets, outputs and ownership positions, the predominance of foreign investors) instead of qualitative ones.

In: Corporate Governance in a Changing Economic and Political Environment: Trajectories of Institutional Change, Michal Federowicz, Ruth V. Aguilera eds., Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2003. 170-194.

State redistribution maintaining a soft budget constraint and a centralised organisational system for companies were some of the essential characteristics of the centrally planned economy. Transition may have been expected to strengthen competition alongside private ownership. The large companies, created artificially at an earlier period, should have split up and redistribution diminished as a distortion of competition. In contrast to this, everyday life at the turn of the millennium in this country echoes with the news of monopolistic tricks and large mergers. We are also informed of redistribution plans and schemes outbidding each other, not to mention the promises of European Union subsidies.
Have the structural foundations for competition really remained weak in Hungary? What kind of economic and social interests are preserving subsidies as a narcotic, and what sort of forces are causing the cyclical nature of redistribution? Can competitiveness be strengthened in the long run at the expense of competition? Besides the theoretical framework and analyses of socio-economic dilemmas, this book offers the Reader a colourful palette of government decisions and actual company cases. It assembles the mosaics of successes and encoded failures by using personal conversations and articles from the daily press, considered to be an archive of contemporary history.

Akadémia Publishing House 2003

Hungarian privatization is considered as a process which has been dominated by standard methods. Most of the firms were sold via public tenders, private placement or public offerings and state budget generated significant cash income from selling. A detailed analysis, however shows that the course of privatization has neither been direct nor uniform even in this country. Every conceivable approach occurred on the scene during the last decade, including free distribution to individuals and institutions or preferences to different types of buyers as well as loosely controlled movements and centralized governmental decisions.
The intention of this paper is to show some reasons behind these fluctuations. Privatization is regarded here as a learning process. Learning process not in a technical sense but rather a trial and error approach, an adjustment of all main actors (governments, enterprise management and potential new owners) led partially by constraints, partially by changing opportunities.

In: Successful Transitions, Political Factors of Progress in Post-socialist Countries, Jürgen Beyer, Jan Wielgohs, Helmut Wiesenthal eds., Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2001. 139-152.

According to general understanding, privatization in Central East Europe does not simply mean the transfer of individual firms from state hands to other proprietors, but it is the precondition and the main instrument of rebuilding the whole economic system. Thus, the task is not to fit in state owned enterprises into a functioning market but to create this new integration mechanism parallel with and by the mean of a wide-ranging change of ownership structure. One of the basic dilemmas of the transformation is, whether it is possible to build up the frameworks of a decentralized market mechanism applying a comprehensive, homogeneous privatization strategy, carried out by centralized governmental institutions. In other words: can privatization be designed?
Based on the Hungarian experience, in comparison with Czech-Slovakia and Poland, this paper will argue that all governments have tried to do so. Nevertheless, their attempts to design ownership changes have been successful at a different degree - not (only) in terms of privatized assets or enterprises but in terms of the impact of programs, guidelines and centralized decision making on the transformation of the proprietary structure. The degree of "design" will be characterized by the stability versus shifts of governmental privatization policies and the relationship between the programs declared and the empirical changes.

In: Institutional Design in New Democracies, A. Lijphart, C.H. Waisman eds., Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1996. 177-194.

(Government's role in changing Hungary's ownership structure)

The paper discusses the shifts in Hungarian privatization strategies and in the role of the government in changing the ownership structure. Analyzing the forms of transformation, the goals and motivations of the participants (enterprises and government organizations) and the reasons for changing the main direction, it argues that the five years history of Hungarian privatization indicates the mixed and unstable character of the process. There has never been a uniform, homogeneous method of changing the ownership structure: market type techniques have been accompanied by central distribution of property.
The often changing governmental strategies, motivated predominantly by purely political considerations, show a clear tendency towards the re-establishment of centralized control of state organizations over the firms. The coming years can see an emergence of redistribution type solutions with highly dubious social and economic implications.

In: Strategic Choice and Path-dependency in Post-socialism, Jerzy Hausner, Bob Jessop, Klaus Nielsen eds., Edward Elgar, Brookfield 1995. pp. 287-308.