Browsing by Person "Ivanovic, Vladan"

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Continuity under a different name, the outcome of privatisation in Serbia
(2016) Geloso, Vincent; Ivanovic, Vladan; Kufenko, Vadim; Begovic, Boris; Stanisic, Nenad
Normally, privatisation is seen as beneficial. In the case of Serbia, the results are disappointing. This paper considers the failure of privatisation in Serbia – a latecomer in the matter – where privatisation was partly a result of exogenous pressures. In Serbia, a sizeable number of privatised firms were bought by bureaucrats and politicians and all firms were subjected to a period of supervision. We argue that this process of privatisation was designed to allow rentseekers to conserve their privileges through asset stripping and that this explains the failure. In order to do so, we perform empirical analysis of the determinants of liquidation, merger and bankruptcy of privatised firms from 2002 to 2015. We construct a novel data set from primary sources, free of the ‘survivorship bias’ and containing proxies for various types of owners, indirect signs of asset stripping strategy and a broad range of controls. Our results indicate that firms owned by politicians face significantly higher risks of bankruptcy, especially after the end of supervision.
It's a man's world? The rise of female entrepreneurship during privatization in Serbia
(2020) Kufenko, Vadim; Ivanovic, Vladan
The relationship between female empowerment and economic development is one of the most complex examples of reverse causality, yet multiple scholars acknowledge that female empowerment promotes economic progress. One of the crucial aspects of female empowerment is female entrepreneurship; however, the literature on the emergence of female entrepreneurship is scarce. We focus on the rise of female entrepreneurship in Serbia and collect an extensive biographical dataset of women, who took part in privatization. Although women enjoyed the same de jure rights as men, they faced a number of informal restrictions such as i) patriarchal values, limiting the role of women in the society and ii) occupations in low-wage sectors, making it difficult to accumulate capital. Analyzing the determinants of failures of the newly privatized firms during 2002{2019 we find a significant negative relationship between the risks of failure and the cases of own independent entrepreneurial success of women prior to privatization as well as the cases, in which only the entrepreneurial success of husbands of these women was registered. This relationship is robust to controlling for diverse characteristics of firms and to inclusion of ownership duration. We also find that the presence of influential husbands in the background was not significantly related to the subsequent change of ownership. Although the ownership change was registered for the majority of firms in our sample, we find that during the Serbian privatization women managed to build up on their own entrepreneurial success, which contributed to female empowerment. These findings can be relevant for understanding the aftermath of privatizations with respect to gender inequality in other transition countries.
Soziale Marktwirtschaft und Ordoliberalismus : ausgewählte ordnungspolitische Aspekte und ihre Anwendung auf die Transitionsländer
(2019) Ivanovic, Vladan; Hagemann, Harald
The dissertation “Social market economy and Ordoliberlism: Selected institutional aspects and its application in transition countries“ analyses the pivotal institutional structures from the perspective of the proponents of social market economy and ordoliberals. Those institutional aspects determine economic development in the long run. In that sense, the research is linked to the contemporary debate on an importance of institutions in determing a long term economic and social progress. The central pillar of order within social market economy and ordoliberalism refers to the importance of stable value of money for efficient exchange and relations between economic agents. The free price order is as fundamental coordination mechanism as it is essential for creation of significant economic and social advantages in national economy. On the other side, in inflatory environment comes to substantial allocative inefficiences. There is as well an important disruptive influence of inflation on the state structures and freedom. The key role in establishing and maintaining the price stability belongs to an independent central bank. It is necessary, but not sufficient condition for it. The stability of prices and the power of central bank to maintain the stability of prices depend on the coordination with the other state instances, especially with the fiscal authorities, and other important circumstances, such as wage development and velocity of money. The second part of the thesis addresses various issues regarding the competitive order and supporting institutional structure for its development. Competitive order is valued as essential for enabling and protecting the freedom, social mobility, minimisation of transaction costs, rise of the exchange and deepening of the economic relations between economic agents. Several requirements have to be met in order to establish a competitive order. First refers to market openness, which is essential for an efficient participation in the world market. Private property regime as a structural right in economy represents the second precondition. Rule of law is the third requirement which is essential for the protection of individual economic agents. It protects them from predatory behaviour of other economic agents as well from the predatory state activities. In order to escape potentially negative impact of the political process on predictability, reliability and impartiality of institutional structure, which is warranted by rule of law, a clear separation of tasks and responsibilities between different elements of state structure is required. Particularly big challenge for the rule of law and its consequence in the form of competitive order is the concentration of private economic power. An establishment of a credible, consistent, and unbiased legal framework is the fundamental prerequisite for limiting inefficiences arising from the concentration of economic power. To intensify and spread state interventions may cause substantial risks in national economy. They jeopardise functionality and efficiency of political system which is essential for the properly functioning of institutional structure. There is, though, enough place for different measures of economic policy if it comes to structural imbalances in the economy. The third part is devoted to the analysis of the guiding ideas regrading the income distribution and general distribution of resources in the conomy. The state measures regarding the redistribution should mitigate the impacts of market failure, as well as market risks and uncertainities. State and the level of the development of the economy and already emloyed state measures are defining possibilities, effectiveness and efficiency of redistributive policy measures. The fourth part empirically analyses different institutional aspects in the transition countries. On the basis of a new de facto index of central bank independence is found that there is a significant effect of it on an economic growth and its volatility. Generally the more independent is a central bank, the larger will be an economic growth and greater its stability. Further, it is determined that the institutional quality measured by WGI exerted a significant influence on an economic growth in transition countries as well. Regarding the inequality, all transition countries recorded the rise of income inequality since the beginning of the transition, which was especially emphasised in the least developed countries.