On the Privatization of “Stolen Goods” in Central and Eastern Europe

With few exceptions, the privatization of state-owned assets has failed to contribute to the transformation of central and eastern European countries into free-market, private-property economies. This relative failure can be attributed to three factors: the reliance on neoclassical economics, the absence of decommunization, and the unwillingness of the new elite in the region to assign ownership rights in state-owned assets to the true owners.