Planning in Transition Economies for Growth and Equity

Readings

WEEK #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction to Transition: Comparative Statistics and Stories Transition Paths	Kornai, Janos. “What the Change of System from Socialism to Capitalism Does and Does not Mean.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 1 (2002): 27-42. “Transition: the First Ten Years: Analysis and Lessons for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.” Washington DC: World Bank, 2002. (PDF) Naughton, Barry. Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform 1978-1993. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN: 0521470552. Public Broadcasting Service. “Frontline: China in the Red.” 1999.
2	The Importance of Institutions	Coase, R. H. “The Institutional Structure of Production.” American Economic Review 82 (September 1992): 713-719. Furubotn, Eirik, and Rudolf Richter. “The New Institutional Economics: an Assessment.” In The New Institutional Economics. Edited by Furubotn, and Richter. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998. ISBN: 0472108174. Granovetter, Mark. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” The American Journal of Sociology 91 (November 1985): 481-510. ———. “A Theoretical Agenda for Economic Sociology.” In The New Economic Sociology: Developments in an Emerging Field. Edited by M. F. Guillen, Randall Collins, Paula England, and Marshall Meyer. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002. ISBN: 0871543435. North, Douglass. “Institutions.” Journal of Economics Perspectives 5 (1991): 97-112. Roland, Gerard. Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets, and Firms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780262182034.
3	The Rule of Law and Property Rights in Transition	Chow, Gregory C. “Challenges of China’s Economic System for Economic Theory.” American Economic Review 87, no. 2 (1997): 321-327. Demsetz, Harold. “Toward a Theory of Property Rights.” American Economic Review 57 (May 1967): 347-359. Gillespie, John. “Law and Development in ‘The Market Place’: An East Asian Perspective.” In Law, Capitalism, and Power in Asia. Edited by K. Jayasuriya. New York: Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 0415197430. Lo, Vai Io, and Xiaowen Tian. “Property Rights, Productivity Gains, and Economic Growth: The Chinese Experience.” Post-Communist Economies 14, no. 2 (2002): 245-258. Posner, Richard A. “Social Norms and the Law: An Economic Approach.” American Economic Review 87, no. 2 (1997): 365-369. Recommended Readings Johnson, Simon, John McMillan, and Christopher Woodruff. “Entrepreneurs and the Ordering of Institutional Reform.” Economics of Transition 8, no. 1 (2000): 1-36.
4	Liberalization and Privatization	Bilsen, Valentijn, and Jozef Konings. “Job Creation, Job Destruction, and Growth of Newly Established, Privatized and State-owned Enterprises in Transition Economies: Survey Evidence from Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.” Journal of Comparative Economics 26, no. 3 (1998): 429-445. Le, Wei. “The Impact of Economic Reform on the Performance of Chinese State Enterprises, 1980-1989.” Journal of Political Economy 105, no. 5 (1997): 1080-106. Megginson, William L., and Jeffry M. Netter. “From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization.” Journal of Economic Literature 39, no. 2 (2001): 321-389. Recommended Readings Shirley, Mary M., and Xu Lixin Colin. “Information, Incentives, and Commitment: An Empirical Analysis of Contracts between Government and State Enterprises.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 14, no. 2 (1998): 358-378. Groves, Theodore, Yongmiao Hong, John McMillan, and Barry Naughton. “China’s Evolving Managerial Labor Market.” The Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 4 (1995): 873-892.
5	Asian versus European Transition?	Brezis, Elise S., and Adi Schnytzer.“Why are the Transition Paths in China and Eastern Europe Different?” Economics of Transition 11, no. 1 (2003): 3-23. Frye, Timothy, and Andrei Shleifer. “The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand.” American Economic Review 87, no. 2 (1997): 354-358. Roberts, Ken, and Changcheng Zhou. “New Private Enterprises in Three Transitional Contexts: Central Europe, the Former Soviet Union, and China.” Post-Communist Economies 12, no. 2 (2000): 187-199. Woo, Wing Thye. “The Art of Reforming Centrally Planned Economies: Comparing China, Poland, and Russia.” Journal of Comparative Economics 18, no. 3 (1994): 276-308.
6	A Rising Tide? The Growth of Inequality in Transition	Brainerd, Elizabeth. “Winners and Loser in Russia’s Economic Transition.” American Economic Review 88, no. 5 (1998): 1094-1116. Keane, Michael P., and Eswar S. Prasad. “Poland: Inequality, Transfers, and Growth in Transition.” Finance and Development 38, no. 1 (2001). Kornai, Janos. “The Reform of the Welfare State and Public Opinion.” American Economic Review 87, no. 2 (1997): 339-343. Sibley, Christopher W., and Patrick Paul Walsh. “Earnings Inequality and Transition: A Regional Analysis of Poland.” IZA Discussion Papers 441. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor, 2002. (PDF ) Ham, John, Jan Svejnar, and Katherine Terrell. “Women’s Unemployment During the Transition: Evidence from Czech and Slovak Micro Data.” Economics of Transition 7, no. 1 (1999): 47-78. Wyzan, Michael. “Increase Inequality, Poverty Accompany Economic Transition.” Transition 2, no. 20 (1996).
7	The Emergence of the Private Firm	Hall, Peter A., and David Soskice. “An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism.” Chapter 1 in Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 0199247757. McMillan, John, and Christopher Woodruff. “Interfirm Relationships and Informal Credit in Vietnam.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1999): 1285-1320. Woodruff, Chirstopher. “The Central Role of Entrepreneurs in Transition Economies.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, no. 3 (2002): 153-170.
8	Relations with Local Government	Gel’man, Vladimir. “In Search of Local Autonomy: The Politics of Big Cities in Russia’s Transition.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27, no. 1 (2003): 48-61. Johnson, Simon, Daniel Kaufmann, John McMillan, and Christopher Woodruff. “Why Do Firms Hide? Bribes and Unofficial Activity after Communism.” Journal of Public Economics 76 (2000): 495-520. Torgler, Benno. “Tax Morale in Transition Countries.” Post-Communist Economies 15, no. 3 (2003): 357-381. Recommended Readings Fforde, Adam, and Stefan de Vylder. From Plan to Market: The Economic Transition in Vietnam. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. (Introduction) Gillespie, John. “Institutional Reform: Controlling Discretion in State Economic Regulation.” In Commercial Legal Development in Vietnam: Vietnamese and Foreign Commentaries. Edited by J. Gillespie. Hong Kong: Butterworths Asia, 1997.
9	The Role of Foreign Investment in Transition	Huang, Yasheng, and Wenhua Di. “A Tale of Two Provinces: The Institutional Environment and Foreign Ownership in China.” MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4482-04; William Davidson Institute Working Paper No. 667, 2004.
10	The Shape of Transition: Cities under Transition	Bertaud, Alain, and Bertrand Renaud. “Cities without Land Markets: Location and Land Use in the Socialist City.” World Bank Policy Working Paper No. 1477, 1995. Scarpaci, Joseph L. “On the Transformation of Socialist Cities.” Urban Geography 21, no. 8 (2000): 659-669. UNECE. “Human Settlement Developments in the Transition Economies of Central and Eastern Europe.” Geneva: United Nations-ECE, 1997. Recommended Readings Zhu, Jieming. “Urban Development under Ambiguous Property Rights: A Case of China’s Transition Economy.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26, no. 1 (2002): 41-57.
11	The Emergence of Entrepreneurs	Berkowitz, Daniel, and David N. DeJong. “Entrepreneurship and Post-Socialist Growth.” William Davidson Institute Working Paper No. 406, 2002. Earle, John, and Zuzana Sakova. “Entrepreneurship from Scratch: Lessons on the Entry Decision into Self- Employment.” Transition Economies IZA Discussion Paper Series IZA DP no. 79, 1999. ———. “Business Start-ups or Disguised Unemployment? Evidence on the Character of Self-Employment from Transition Countries.” Labor Economics 7, no. 5 (2000): 575-601. Recommended Readings Johnson, Simon, John McMillan, and Christopher Woodruff. “Entrepreneurs and the Ordering of Institutional Reform.” Economics of Transition 8, no. 1 (2000): 1-36.
12	Bringing it all together	Kim, Annette. “A Market with the “Right” Property Rights: The Newly Emerged Private Real Estate Market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” Economics of Transition 12, no. 2 (2004).