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Abstract:
We analyze the effects of ownership type and concentration on performance of a population of firms in a model large-scale privatization economy (Czech Republic). Using specifications based on first-differences and unique instrumental variables, we find that few types of private ownership improve dynamic post-privatization performance. Concentrated foreign (but not domestic) ownership improves some measures of performance relative to state ownership. Foreign investors engage in strategic restructuring by increasing the rate of change of sales, while domestic private owners reduce the rate of change of sales and labor cost without increasing profitability. The effects of concentrated foreign ownership support the agency theory and go against theories stressing the positive effects of managerial autonomy and initiative. Our results are also consistent with the thesis that large domestic stockholders are not improving performance because they loot the firms. We find some support for the hypothesis that firms restructure by first lowering and later increasing the rate of change of employment. The state as a holder of the golden share has a positive effect on employment, while stimulating profitable restructuring. The state hence appears as a more economically and socially helping agent than in some recent studies.

ownership, performance, privatization, corporate governance, panel data, endogeneity, industrial organization

Abstract:
We use new firm-level data to examine the effects of spinoffs and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, which analyzes spinoffs almost exclusively in advanced economies, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that spinoffs and ownership are endogenous variables. We find that spinoffs increase the firm's profitability but do not alter its scale of operations, while the effect of privatization depends on the resulting ownership structure - sometime improving performance and sometime bringing about decline that is consistent with tunneling (looting) by managers or (partial) owners. The effects of privatization are hence much less clear-cut than suggested in earlier studies. Methodologically, our study provides evidence that it is important to control for changes in ownership when analyzing spinoffs and generally to control for endogeneity, selection and data attrition when analyzing the effects of spinoffs and privatization.

Spinoffs, breakups, privatization, corporate performance, endogeneity

Abstract:
The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in arapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and vary across regions, coinciding with differences in policies and institutional development. In China relatively more estimates suggest that privatization to domestic owners improves the level of performance. Concentrated private ownership has a stronger positive effect on performance than dispersed ownership in the post-communist economies, but foreign joint ventures rather than wholly owned foreign firms have a positive effect in China. Worker or collective ownership does not have a negative effect. In the post-communist economies new firms are equally or more efficient than firms privatized to domestic owners, and foreign start-ups are more efficient than domestic ones. Privatization is not associated with lower employment. When accompanied by complementary reforms, privatization has a positive effect on economic growth. Three factors appear to drive the more positive effect of privatization to foreign than domestic owners. Domestic managers have more limited skills and access to world markets, domestically privatized firms have been more subject to tunneling and in some countries new large shareholders artificially decreased performance. The important policy implication is that privatization per se does not guarantee improved performance, at least not in the short- to medium-run. Type of private ownership, corporate governance, access to know-how and markets, and the legal and institutional system matter for firm performance.

Economic Systems, Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress, Banks & Banking Reform, Financial Crisis Management & Restructuring, Privatization

Abstract:
Using cross-sectional analysis of corporate dividend policy we show that large shareholders extract rents from firms and expropriate minority shareholders in the weak corporate governance environment of an emerging economy. By comparing dividends paid across varying corporate ownership structures - concentration, type, and domicile of ownership - we quantify these effects and reveal that they are substantial. We find that the target payout ratio for firms with majority ownership is low but that the presence of a significant minority shareholder increases the target payout ratio and hence precludes a majority owner from extracting rent. In contrast to other studies from developed markets, our unique dataset from the Czech Republic for the period 1996-2003 permits us to take account of the endogeneity of ownership.

Rent extraction, Large shareholders, Corporate governance, Dividend policy

Abstract:
We analyze the effects of different types and concentration of ownership on performance using a population of firms in a model transition economy after mass privatization. Specifications based on first-differences and unusual instrumental variables show that contrary to conventional wisdom, the effects of privatization and different types of ownership are limited and many types of private owners do not generate performance that is different from that of firms with state ownership. Concentrated ownership has a positive effect but only in some instances and a positive effect of foreign ownership is detectable primarily for majority ownership and foreign industrial firms. The effects of concentrated ownership support the agency theory and go against theories stressing the positive effects of managerial autonomy. Our results are also consistent with managers or stockholders "looting" the firms. The state as a holder of the golden share has a positive effect on employment and in some specifications also on output and profitability. Overall, our results suggest that the expectations and earlier findings of positive effects of privatization on performance were premature, with the effects of many types of ownership being indistinguishable from that of state ownership.

ownership, performance, privatization, corporate governance, panel data, endogeneity, industrial organization

Abstract:
An easy and popular method for measuring the size of the underground economy is to use macro-data such as money demand or electricity demand to infer what the legitimate economy needs, and then to attribute the remaining consumption to the underground economy. Such inferences rely on the stability of parameters of the money demand and electricity demand equations, or at the very least on knowledge of how these parameters are changing. We argue that the pace of change of these parameters (such as velocity) is too variable in transition economies for the above methods of estimating the size of the underground economy to be applicable. We make our point by using the Czech Republic and other transition country data from the financial and electricity sectors.

Shadow economy, measureament of tax evasion, transition economies

Abstract:
A fundamental question in economics since the 1930s has been whether an administrative price system could simulate the results of perfect competition even without a true market for the means of production. The theoretical possibility of such a system has been known since the introduction of market socialism by Oskar Lange. We have used the artificial bidding market involved in the Czech voucher privatization process to test whether a sequential process of trial-and-error can set administrative prices close to equilibrium. It would appear from this natural experiment that Robbins and Hayek were correct in doubting the real-world feasibility of market socialism.

bidding scheme, Oskar Lange's model, privatization, price setting, voucher scheme

Abstract:
The natural experiment of voucher privatization in the Czech Republic is used to test whether prices that were adjusted in a limited number of discrete steps based primarily on the extent of excess demand or supply are able to fully reflect both public and private information. The eventual market prices are used as a proxy for the underlying true value of the shares in voucher privatization. We find that after two or three price adjustments, public information does not add any predictive power to an equation that uses voucher prices to predict future market prices for all but the smallest shares involved in the process. Similarly, after the early rounds in the process we found that even professional fund managers did not possess private information that enabled them to identify (and bid for) shares that would eventually have greater value than could be predicted from the current voucher prices. Taken as a whole, the results strongly suggest that prices adjusted on the basis of excess demand are able to rapidly incorporate all available information, even when professionals have a strong incentive to attempt to identify and use such information.

Abstract:
We estimate the impact of macroeconomic news on composite stock returns in three emerging European Union financial markets (the Budapest BUX, Prague PX-50, and Warsaw WIG-20), using intraday data and macroeconomic announcements. Our contribution is twofold. We employ a larger set of macroeconomic data releases than used in previous studies and also use intraday data, an excess impact approach, and foreign news to provide more reliable inferences. Composite stock returns are computed based on five-minute intervals (ticks) and macroeconomic news are measured based on the deviations of the actual announcement values from their expectations. Overall, we find that all three new EU stock markets are subject to significant spillovers directly via the composite index returns from the EU, the U.S. and neighboring markets; Budapest exhibits the strongest spillover effect, followed by Warsaw and Prague. The Czech and Hungarian markets are also subject to spillovers indirectly through the transmission of macroeconomic news. The impact of EU-wide announcements is evidenced more in the case of Hungary, while the Czech market is more impacted by U.S. news. The Polish market is marginally affected by EU news. In addition, after decomposing pooled announcements, we show that the impact of multiple announcements is stronger than that of single news. Our results suggest that the impact of foreign macroeconomic announcements goes beyond the impact of the foreign stock markets on Central and Eastern European indices. We also discuss the implications of the findings for financial stability in the three emerging European markets.

stock markets, intraday data, macroeconomic announcements, European Union, volatility, excess impact of news

Abstract:
If co-existing parallel markets are efficient, then arbitrage will maintain a correct pricing relationship. A related question is whether two parallel emerging markets offering more or less the same securities but using different institutional designs, can behave as asingle, fully integrated market. In this paper we introduce an explicit model of price convergence (with transaction costs), in which price differences are studied using levels of arbitrage activity. For the empirical analysis we use two parallel markets in the Czech Republic 97 the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) and the RMS (over-the-counter system). In particular, we study the degree of arbitrage activity for different segments of the PSE and the evolution of arbitrage in the early history of these emerging markets. The empirical results provide evidence of market linkage for actively traded stocks. We find a significant relationship between the segment of the market to which a given firm belongs and the estimated level of arbitrage trading.Moreover, the level of arbitrage activity increases over time for all market segments,and, as the markets mature, the differences among the segments gradually disappear.

Abstract:
Measured rates of growth in real per capita income differ drastically depending on the data source. This phenomenon occurs largely because data sets differ in whether and how they adjust for changes in relative prices across countries. Replication of several recent studies of growth determinants shows that results are sensitive in important ways to the choice of data. Previous warnings against using data adjusted to increase cross-country comparability to study within-country patterns over time (growth rates) have been largely ignored at the cost of possibly contaminating the conclusions.

growth, measurement

Abstract:
Replication of two recent studies of growth determinants shows that results are sensitive to the choice of data from which growth rates are calculated, especially with respect to whether economic convergence has occurred. Previous warnings against using data that has been adjusted to increase cross-country comparability to study within-country patterns over time (growth rates) have been largely ignored at the cost of possibly contaminating the conclusions.

Growth, Measurement, Developing Economies

Abstract:
This paper shows how to cope with a problem of model selection and simplification using the principle of coherence (Gabriel (1969): A procedure involving testing a set of models ought not accept a model while rejecting a more general model). The mathematical lattice theory is used to define a partial ordering over the space of considered models. Several examples of partial ordering in large families of models are given along with a searching algorithm to determine the best model with respect to chosen criteria.

Model selection and simplification, principle of coherence, lattice of models, regression, ARMA models

Abstract:
This paper deals with the relationship between mass privatization and stock market development in transition economies. The link is investigated empirically using a panel of data that includes most transition countries. Our results confirm the hypothesis that mass privatization exerted a negative influence on stock market functioning over the short and medium term. Further, it appears that stock markets in countries with mass privatization were initially perceived as mere byproducts of the privatization process. Such stock markets typically not only failed in their core mission of providing capital for the corporate sector, but generated negative investor sentiment and did little to catalyze economic growth.

privatization, mass privatization, emerging stock markets, stock market

Abstract:
In the present paper we concentrate on interactions, co-movements and the sharing of information signals between the organized (and parallel) markets in the Czech Republic. In particular, the lead-lag relationship between the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) and the RMS (over the counter system) is studied to identify the leaders and followers in the information transmission process.

The analysis shows that the PSE holds the leading position in the the main market of actively traded stocks, but the RMS dominates on segments with lower liquidity. These links did not exist during the early history of both markets, and they have become stronger as time proceeds. The analysis of the intra-market relations also confirms that liquid segments play a leading role in both the PSE and the RMS.

Due to the fact that some links between parallel market segments are missing, we conclude that the PSE and the RMS do not yet behave as a fully integrated market.

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Abstract:
Measurement of quality changes has proven to be an especially difficult aspect of calculating unbiased rates of inflation. We propose a new methodology of capturing quality improvements based on consumer focus groups and apply this methodology in an environment where quality changes might be expected to be especially rapid and extensive, a post-communist transition economy. We find that the methodology indicates a substantial understatement of quality improvements during transition, and, therefore, a substantial overstatement of inflation resulting in a serious downward bias in growth rate estimates for post-communist economies. The move to free markets has apparently improved consumers welfare more by improving what they can purchase than by increasing how much they can purchase. Overall, mismeasurement of quality changes may have understated Czech growth rates during the first decade after communism by as much as 5 percentage points per year.

Bias, Quality Change, Transition Economies, Czech Republic

Abstract:
Substantial understatement of the degree of quality improvement during transition, and, therefore, a substantial overstatement of inflation rates has resulted in a serious downward bias in estimates of the rate of growth of post-communist economies. The move to free markets has apparently improved consumers' welfare more by improving what they can purchase than by increasing how much they can purchase. Examining 63 products, focus group respondents in the Czech Republic reported that if they were to purchase the 1990 quality product today they would only be willing to do so at an average of 54 per cent of the current price for the current quality product. This implies that the actual increase in prices for the decade for these products was 66 per cent instead of the official 139 per cent. Overall, mismeasurement of quality changes may have understated Czech growth rates during the first decade after communism by as much as 5 percentage points per year.

Inflation Bias, Quality Change, Transition Economies

Abstract:
Mismeasurement of inflation is likely to be more severe in a transition economy than in a more stable environment. Comparisons of self-reported changes in economic welfare with changes in incomes suggest that official Romanian inflation measures may be overstated by between 100 and 300 percent at a reported annual inflation rate of 40 per cent.

Abstract:
Mismeasurement of inflation is likely to be more severe in a transition economy than in a more stable environment. Comparisons of self-reported changes in economic welfare with changes in incomes suggest that official Romanian inflation measures may be overstated by between 100 and 300 percent at a reported annual inflation rate of 40 per cent.

Abstract:
Many observers argue that informed and insider trading is widespread in the emerging financial markets of transition countries, yet rigorous treatment of this issue has been virtually non-existent. The current paper estimates the extent of informed trading on the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) using intra-day transaction data. Our estimates confirm that the average share of informed trading is equal to 0.32, which is high relative to developed markets and varies considerably among stocks. Using the Easley et al. (1996) approach on the very best segment of the PSE we obtained a high average probability of informed trading. Since data used in this study covers the period after the major attempts to improve market regulations, our results indicate that the PSE needs further strengthening to recover credibility and to become a real source of corporate financing.

Abstract:
This paper analyses a 2002 survey of the Czech and Slovak Republics, and more limited surveys of Hungary and Poland to conclude that tax evasion is lowest among those who believe that they are getting good quality government services for the taxes they pay. A 20% increase in perceived quality of government services could lead to a 13% drop in the frequency of tax evasion. The present analysis is the first of this sort to indicate that quality of government services influences the willingness to pay taxes. Governments in transition countries who suffer from weak tax collection apparatus may wish to transmit clear information on the quality of their services in order to cut down on evasion.

Abstract:
We present a model of bank passivity and regulatory failure. Banks with low equity positions have more incentives to be passive in liquidating bad loans. We show that they tend to hide distress from regulatory authorities and are ready to offer a higher rate of interest in order to attract deposits compared to banks that are not in distress. Therefore, higher deposit rates may act as an early warning signal of bank failure. We provide empirical evidence that the balance sheet information collected by the Czech National Bank is not a better predictor of bank failure than higher deposit rates. This confirms the importance of asymmetric information between banks and the regulator and suggests the usefulness of looking at deposit rate differentials as early signals of distress in emerging market economies where banks' equity positions are often low.

Bank failures, bank supervision, Czech banking crisis, default risk, transitional economies

Abstract:
In 1992 the Czech Republic privatized state assets, which resulted in some citizens receiving an unexpected windfall. Whether the windfall was consumed or saved provides a clear test of the permanent income hypothesis in a transitional economy. Analysis of data from a survey conducted specifically to test this hypothesis indicates that only a small number of transferred assets were consumed, a finding which is consistent with the permanent income hypothesis.

Abstract:
We characterize the price discovery in three emerging EU stock markets — the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland — by employing high-frequency five-minute intraday data on stock market index returns and four classes of EU and U.S. macroeconomic announcements during 2004–2007. We account for the difference of each announcement from its market expectation and we jointly model the volatility of the returns accounting for intra-day movements and day-of-the-week effects. Our findings show that real-time interactions on the new EU markets are strongly determined by matured stock markets as well as the macroeconomic news originating thereby. Monetary news has virtually no impact on stock returns while U.S. prices affect all three markets. The real economy announcements have varying effects but the news on the EU current account affects all three markets in a uniform manner. Only some EU economic climate and confidence announcements affect stock returns. In general, differences in results across markets are driven by differences in key market participants. Volatility of the returns is accounted for at the beginning and end of the trading session and it declines dramatically during the rest of the day. All three markets also show a decrease in volatility by the middle of the business week. Our findings yield insights into the process of stock market integration in the EU as well as portfolio allocation on the new EU markets.

price discovery, stock markets, intra-day data, macroeconomic news, European Union, volatility, excess impact of news

Abstract:
We analyse the effects of different types and concentration of ownership on performance using a large population of firms in the Czech Republic after mass privatization. Specifications based on first-differences combined with instrumental variables show that the performance effects of different types and concentration of ownership are limited when compared to earlier studies. Often, concentrated ownership has a positive effect, a finding that supports the agency theory. The positive effect of foreign ownership is detected primarily for majority ownership and for ownership by foreign industrial firms. The state as a holder of the golden share has a positive effect on employment and sometimes, also on output and profitability. Overall, our results highlight the benefits of strategic restructuring accompanied by an inflow of new capital and managerial culture.

Abstract:
Learning is a subject of intense research in experimental economics. We contribute to this debate by presenting persuasive evidence that learning took place among uninformed heterogeneous agents on a quasi-stock market during a large-scale natural experiment that by size, incentives, and variation belongs among the largest experiments ever conducted. To detect and quantify learning we develop new measures of individual performance during the bidding process when prices of goods vary over succeeding stages of bidding.

learning, natural experiment, auction, stock market, privatization, heterogeneous agents, transition

Abstract:
An easy and popular method for measuring the size of the underground economy is to use macro data such as money demand or electricity demand to infer what the legitimate economy needs, and then to attribute the remaining consumption to the underground economy. Such inferences rely on the stability of parameters of the money demand and electricity demand equations, or at very least on knowledge of how these parameters are changing. We argue that the pace of change of these parameters is too variable in transition economies for the above methods of estimating the size of the underground economy to be applicable. We make our point by using Czech Republic and other transition country data from the financial and electricity sectors.

Abstract:
We analyze a unique dataset to test an empirical model of retail bank fee determinants in five Central European countries. Due to the data structure we can cope with heterogeneity and cross-subsidization by employing a representative fee index instead of using variables associated with individual fees. We find support for the Structure-Conduct-Performance hypothesis about the effect of industry concentration, the importance of differences in reliance on cashless payments, and differences in the labor intensity and technology level of bank operations. We also show that cross-country differences in retail bank fees can be explained by fundamental economic factors.

banking, bank fees, Central and Eastern Europe, international comparison, Structure-Conduct-Performance hypothesis

Abstract:
Replication of two recent studies of growth determinants shows that results are sensitive to the choice of data from which growth rates are calculated, especially with respect to whether economic convergence has occurred. Previous warnings against using data that has been adjusted to increase cross-country comparability to study within-country patterns over time (growth rates) have been largely ignored at the cost of possibly contaminating the conclusions.

Growth, measurement

Abstract:
Using surveys of the Czech Republic taken in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 we measure how the percentage of tax evaders evolved from 1995 until 2006. We find that at first evasion rose, leveled off, and then fell along a quadratic path, suggesting the existence of what we call an evasional Kuznets curve. Our paper is the first to document the existence of an evasional Kuznets curve and to show how it can help improve Markov-chain predictions of tax evasion. We conclude by suggesting that the evasional Kuznets curve may be a subset of a larger trend in evasion for both transitional and developed economies.

Underground economy, tax evasion, Markov chains, transition, evasional Kuznets curve

Abstract:
We use new firm-level data to examine the effects of firm divestitures and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that divestitures and ownership are potentially endogenous variables. We find that divestitures increase the firm's profitability but do not alter its scale of operations, while the effect of privatization depends on the resulting ownership structure sometimes improving performance and sometimes bringing about decline. The effects of privatization are thus more nuanced than suggested in earlier studies. Methodologically, our study provides evidence that it is important to control for changes in ownership when analyzing divestitures and to control for endogeneity, selection and data attrition when analyzing the effects of divestitures and privatization.

Abstract:
Results of numerous cross-country growth regressions have been found to be sensitive to specification, time period or sample coverage. Several authors have observed that results may depend on the source and data collection methods for right-hand side variables. In this paper, we suggest that a more fundamental problem may exist with respect to the growth rates used in the majority of studies. Differences in measured growth rates are severe across widely-used sources. More critically, these differences are correlated with countries' level of development. As an illustration, we show that the results of two recent studies depend critically on which data set is used to derive the growth measure.

Growth, measurement, developing economies

Abstract:
The bid-ask spread affects significantly the performance of financial markets. We explore the impact of informed trading on the composition of the bid-ask spread in high frequency data from the Czech equity market, which has been plagued by informed trading due to insufficient regulation and missing institutions. Our estimates suggest that the Czech market-maker based trading system is rather efficient in dealing with informed trading. Only 17% of the bid-ask spread is explained by informed trading, which corresponds roughly to the share of the adverse-selection component in developed markets. An explanation based on the difference between the posted and traded spreads is offered.

Market microstructure, Bid-ask spread, Informed trading, Emerging markets

Abstract:
We use a dataset of 1062 individuals from the Czech Republic to forecast the evolution of tax evasion in that country. We ask each respondent how intensely (never, sometimes, often) he evaded taxes in 1995, 1999, and 2000, to calculate probabilities the average individual will move between these categories of evasion in any given year. These "transition" probabilities allow us to predict a rising tide of tax evasion in the next decade. We estimate the reduced form parameters which determine evasion and suggest how government might influence these parameters to prevent the Czech Republic from bogging down in a permanent mire of tax evasion.

Tax evasion, transition economies, dynamic modelling, Czech Republic

Abstract:
We report further evidence to support the contention that inflationary biases in transition economies may be substantial due to consumer substitution, outlet substitution, underadjustment for quality changes, and new goods biases where new goods are properly understood as those that are new to the economy in question rather than in general.

Abstract:
The link between informed trading and the bid-ask spread has been the focus of abundant literature and some authors feared that a large amount of informed trading might lead to shutdown of markets. We explore this issue using data from the Czech Republic. Our estimates confirm that the share of informed trading and its variability is indeed high relative to developed markets, however, share of the adverse selection component is only 14% of the spread. Since the Czech Republic has been known in the financial community as being plagued by informed trading, our findings suggest that the relative importance of adverse selection as a determinant of the spread is generally low across markets.

Market microstructure, informed trading, bid-ask spread, adverse selection

Abstract:
This paper investigates the possibility that newly-emerging equity markets in Central Europe exhibit semi-strong form efficiency such that no relationship exists between lagged values of changes in economic variables and changes in equity prices. We find that while there are connections between the real economy and equity market returns in Poland and Hungary, these links occur with lags, suggesting the possibility of profitable trading strategies based on public information and rejecting semi-strong efficiency. For the Czech Republic the situation is more complex. In recent periods, little connection exists between lagged economic variables and equity market returns. Although this finding might be viewed as consistent with semi-strong efficiency, in fact there is also little connection between current economic values and stock prices in the Czech Republic. Thus, instead of processing information efficiently, the Czech market appears to be entirely divorced from the real world. It is suggested that the difference in the current status of these markets may be due to the different methods by which they were created.

Semi-strong efficiency, emerging markets, Granger causality

Abstract:
Mismeasurement of inflation is likely to be more severe in a transition economy than in a more stable environment. Reasonable estimates of the size of the inflationary bias in the Czech Republic suggest that conventionally reported declines in real output and living standards during the transition may be a
statistical artifact rather than a real phenomenon.

Abstract:
In the present paper we concentrate on the interaction and sharing of the information between the organized markets in the Czech Republic. Moreover, the interesting lead-lag relationship between the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) and RMS (over the counter system) is studied to identify the leaders and followers in the information transmission process. The analysis shows that new information penetrates through the main market of the PSE, and that RMS dominates on the segments with lower liquidity. The leading position of the PSE was confirmed via VAR models. Basically, a shock on the PSE affected all segments of both markets, while a shock to any segment of the RMS had an effect (if any) only on the corresponding segment of the PSE. Because of missing links between some market segments, we conclude that the PSE-RMS do not behave as one integrated market yet.