Privatization
Privatization was a fundamental component of the process of transformation in Central and Eastern European countries. It was also the most important case of privatization when considering the number of countries involved, the number of enterprises privatized, and the value of privatized assets and jobs in proportion to the size of the economies and employment. The apparent similarity of privatization blueprints notwithstanding, different countries operated under different conditions, faced different constraints, and had different political and social preferences concerning transformation and privatization. These led countries to pursue different goals via privatization and to use different methods. Consequently, economic and institutional outcomes were also different. It turns out that there was a clear, direct relation between the quality of institutions and the outcome of privatization: Central European countries fared much better than Eastern European countries thanks to the more developed market-institutional context and the perspective of EU access in the former.