State-owned enterprises were the dominant players in socialist economies during the past four decades. Yet most such governments had become dissatisfied with these enterprises over time. Among the main problems were: -- Inefficiencies of production methods -- Stagnating production rates -- Poor quality of the items produced -- High pollution rates -- Lack of technological innovation This report review the attempts of seven socialist countries to reform their state-owned enterprises -- Algeria, China, Hungary, Laos, Mozambique, Poland, and Yugoslavia. The report assesses the experience of these countries to date and forecasts future prospects for reform. Through their analysis, the augthors provide guidance for other socialist countries seeking to open their economies.

This book suggests some of the ways in which levels of development shape public sector reform and privatization in developed and developing countries, showing that conservative as well as socialist governments were committed to increasing the state's guiding role in the political economy.

This book starts from the premise that economic liberalization - reduced state interference in economic life - is the common element in the current trend towards privatization and deregulation in the West and economic reform and restructuring in the East. In popular parlance, "privatization" and "perestroika" are its watchwords, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev its heralds. But the specific character of the liberalization will be determined by the social characteristics of different societies. In order to study the reform process in the two systems, it is necessary to dispose of a general conceptual framework capable of embracing both a (predominantly) market economy and a (predominantly) centrally planned economy. The key objective of this work is to provide such a unified framework, and on that basis to analyze the policy conflicts that dominated both systems in the 1980s and the prospects for further change in the years ahead.

Deals with a perfect-administration interpretation of the Soviet-type economy, the financial and macrophenomena in the administered economy, the growth strategy and growth performance in the Soviet world, the semi-reformed economy and its characteristic problems.