Investment and Property Rights in Yugoslavia
The Long Transition to a Market Economy

In this 1992 book, Dr Uvalic demonstrates the similarities of the Yugoslav economy to other socialist systems.

Milica Uvalic (Author)

9780521122580, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 November 2009

276 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

"...a welcome affirmation of the role of institutions in evaluating economic systems....The book is a careful assessment of a wide spectrum of theoretical literature on property rights and their effect on investment. While Yugoslav theory and practice constitute the core of the analysis, the scope is much broader both theoretically and empirically than just the one country....Overall the book constitutes a significant contribution to critical evaluation of existing theories of self-management." Diane Flaherty, Slavic Review

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.

List of tables and graphs
Introduction
Part I. The Institutional and Theoretical Framework: 1. The Yugoslav road towards market socialism
2. The investment theory of the labour-managed firm
3. Extensions of the LMF investment theory
4. The investment behaviour of the socialist firm
Part II. Empirical Evidence on the Nature of the Yugoslav System: 5. Yugoslav investment and savings performance
6. Determinants of investment in Yugoslavia
7. Econometric tests of Yugoslav investment behaviour
Part III. Pressure for More Radical Reforms in Yugoslavia: 8. Early attempts at introducing investment incentives
9. Current property reforms
10. Specific features of the Yugoslav transition
11. An overview of conclusions
Appendices
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Economic systems & structures [KCS]