Privatization in Serbia: Results and institutional failures

Since the beginning of the 1990’s several models of privatization have been applied in Serbia. While much was written concerning the models themselves at the time of their application, remarkably little has been written in regards to the assessment of their implementation over the last decade. The paper investigates the scope, types, and results, with an emphasis on this time period. Given that the official failure rate of privatizations undertaken is around one in four, the paper focuses on the weaknesses of the legal and economic aspects of the model, the weaknesses of the privatization implementation, and the weaknesses in the monitoring of the privatization process. Another focus is on the inadequate attention paid to the need for institutional coherence, which led to results that were not in accord with the goals set out. The paper will also point out the areas of further research that, in the opinion of the authors, should be undertaken in order to come to an assessment of privatization as the central and most important aspect of the transition.