This book was first published in 1992. For decades Yugoslavia had been developing its own model of socialism based on workers' self-management and the increasing use of the market mechanism. As a result, many scholars view the Yugoslav economy differently from other socialist systems. In this book, Dr Milica Uvalic demonstrates how some of the fundamental features of the Yugoslav economy have remained similar to those characterising other socialist economies. Dr Uvalic focuses on theoretical and empirical issues related to investment in Yugoslavia since 1965. She examines investment policies, sources of finance, macroeconomic performance, enterprise incentives, and current property reforms in relation to Western theory on investment behaviour in the labour-managed firm and Kornai's theory on socialist economies. In line with Kornai's theory, the author argues that investment reforms have not led to substantially changed enterprise behaviour, which illustrates the limited results to be expected from partial reforms in a socialist economy. The fundamental problems in Yugoslavia are thus generic to socialist economic systems, rather that the specific characteristic of self-management.

The countries in the Western Balkans have been severely affected by the wars and conflicts that led to the breakup of former Yugoslavia, by political instability and the effort of creating new states, weak economies and high levels of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, and inequality. As revealed by recent surveys, such as EBRD's Life in Transition Survey and Eurofound's European Quality of Life Survey, life satisfaction in the region is far below that elsewhere in Europe. In recent years they had achieved a strong impetus of economic growth with falling rates of unemployment and increasing optimism for the future. However, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has brought about a sudden reversal of these trends and a renewed deterioration in the economic outlook, and an increase in social hardships that heralds a repeat of past failures in economic inclusion policies. This book identifies the key challenges in the areas of economic inclusion, focusing on the themes of labour markets, vocational education and skills, female entrepreneurship and the integration of migrants. It considers the opportunities for solutions to "build back better" once the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis begins, and offers proposals for more acceptable, equitable and effective economic inclusion policies.

In this book, Milica Uvalic examines the theoretical and empirical issues related to investment in Yugoslavia since 1965. She explores investment policies, sources of finance, macroeconomic performance, enterprise incentives and current property reforms in relation to Western theory on investment behavior in the labor-managed firm and Kornai's theory on socialist economies. In line with Kornai's theory, the author argues that the fundamental causes of problems in Yugoslavia are generic to socialist economic systems, rather than the specific characteristic of self-management.

This book, the second of two volumes, brings together the work of Domenico Mario Nuti to highlight his significant and varied contribution to economics. Bringing together works from across Nuti’s career, his distinctive intellectual framework is exemplified in relation to discussions on the drivers of economic growth and development, the most efficient economic system, the organisation of firms, and how economies should be managed. This volume gives particular attention to Nuti’s views about how economic systems evolve, about the possibilities for various forms of economic democracy; and his analysis of East-West integration and globalization. The volume also contains a bibliography of his works.

This book, the first of two volumes, brings together the work of Domenico Mario Nuti to highlight his significant and varied contribution to economics. Bringing together works from across Nuti's career, his distinctive intellectual framework is exemplified in relation to discussions on the drivers of economic growth and development, the most efficient economic system, the organisation of firms, and how economies should be managed. This volume gives particular attention to socialist economic systems, and the transition of former socialist countries to market economies. This book, through the inclusion of an introduction, aims to contextualise his ideas and illustrate their continued relevance. It will be of wide interest to students and researchers.

This up to date book provides the first evidence on employee-ownership in Central and Eastern Europe. This subject has attracted growing interest in recent years, since the sale and free distribution of enterprise shares to employed workers and mangers have surprisingly become frequent privatization methods in many transitional economies. The book highlights some of the crucial issues which have been debated in recent economic literature, in particular the advantages and risks of employee-ownership in comparison with other privatization methods. It also provides an overview of individual countries' experiences and makes some important policy recommendations. Privatization Surprises in Transition Economies is a wide-ranging survey which considers employee- ownership within privatization legislation and its diffusion and implementation problems in 14 transitional economies. Using empirical evidence on the impact of this privatization method, the authors address issues such as enterprise restructuring, employment, wages, productivity and investment policies. They conclude that employee-ownership has a bright future, and that the fears expressed by many policy advisers regarding the negative implications of employee ownership were largely exaggerated. This privatization method has proven to be one of the quickest, and has also brought with it many positive changes such as decentralization, increased productivity and motivation and more moderate restructuring policies - especially with regard to employment reductions. This book also presents some of the weaknesses of this form of privatization and identifies such possible improvement as the use of employee-ownership in combination with other privatization methods.

The effects and impact of employee participation and employee ownership continue to be themes of enduring interest to social scientists from a range of disciplines. The analysis presented in this volume are representative of the best economics research being carried out in the study of labor and empirical studies. Several of the papers deal with the issue of privatization in transition economies, where a large number of newly privatized firms have effectively been transformed into employee owned enterprises. Other key themes covered in this volume are profit sharing in both East and West Europe, the issue of evolutionary transformation of cooperatives into conventional private firms, and the growing importance of the role of social cooperatives in the welfare state.