engleski

The Grey Economy and Privatization Process in Croatia: 1997-2001

This paper analyses the strength of the link between the process of privatisation and the grey economy in Croatia between 1997 and 2001. Although there is no econometrically determined correlation between the privatisation process and the UE, most of the available indicators show that the privatisation process in this period has mainly been the context for the increase in the size of the underground economy. The paper identifies the fundamental forms in which the UE appeared in privatisation in the second half of the 90s, the motivations for, sources and causes of the grey zones, and those crucially involved, while a large part of the analysis relates to an estimate of their social and economic effects. Because it is inherently difficult to grasp the precise figures, the analysis relies more on various instruments of qualitative analysis, and a good deal of the attention shifts from economic to important socio-economic factors that have underlain the behaviour of the key figures in UE activity. The analysis relies particularly on data obtained by empirical research into public perception of the privatisation process (1998), and on available data from the judiciary and the media about the forms of economic crime related with privatisation. Most UE activities identified in previous research (political clientelism, fictional additional capitalisation, failure to declare or the appropriation of the profits of firms, asset stripping, deliberately putting a firm into bankruptcy, corruption, bribery, abuse of official position) went on working in the second half of the nineties, and new grey zones are showing up in the privatisation of the banking sector and coupon privatisation. The review of transformation and privatisation that has been set off will not be adequate to neutralise the negative and distorting effects of the grey zones of the process of the proceeding phase. In the conclusion, attention is drawn to the institutional measures that would tend towards the further reduction of political clientelism, an increase of public control of the business activities of privatised companies, the development of an anti-corruption corporate culture and code of conduct, and the obviation of the key socio-cultural determinants and motivations for the activity of those involved in the UE.

privatization; private ownership elite; political cronysm; gray economy; corruption; legitimacy; revision of privatisation

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