Comprehensive panel data on privatization transactions and labor productivity in Romanian industrial corporations are used to describe the post-privatization ownership structure, and to estimate the effect of Romania's diverse privatization policies on firm performance. The econometric results show consistently positive, highly significant effects of private ownership on labor productivity growth, the point estimates implying an increased 1.0 to 1.7 percentage growth for a 10 percent rise in private shareholding. The strongest estimated impacts are associated with sales to outside blockholders; insider transfers and mass privatization are estimated to have significantly smaller-although still positive-effects on firm performance.
NOTE: A revised version of this paper was published in Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 30, No. 4 (December 2002), pp. 657-682.