The political economy of property rights : institutional change and credibility in the reform of centrally planned economies / edited by David L. Weimer.

Originally published: 1997.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

The political economy of property rights / David L. Weimer -- Credible commitment and property rights : the role of strategic interaction between political and economic actors / Daniel Diermeier ... [and others] -- The political commitment to markets and marketization / Barry R. Weingast -- Political determinants of the success of economic transition / Nikolai Mikhailov -- Comment on "Political determinants of the success of economic transition" / Adam Przeworski -- Russian privatization and the limits of credible commitment / Timothy Frye -- Russian privatization and the limits of credible commitment / Timothy Frye -- Three issues of credible commitment and Russian privatization / John M. Litwack -- Legislative politics and the the political economy of property rights in post-communist Russia -- Brendan Kiernan and Francis X. Bell -- Commitment, coordination, and the demise of the post-communist parliament in Russia / Steven S. Smith -- Private firms, city government, and arbitration : enforcing economic legality in St. Petersburg / Joel M. Ericson -- Comment on "Private firms, city government, and arbitration" / Anthony Jones -- Property rights and institutional change in the Czech and Slovak republics / Mariusz Mark Dobek -- Comment on "Property rights and institutional change in the Czech and Slovak Republics" / Sharon Wolchik -- Institutional structures, labor interests, and evolving privatization bargains in Poland / Lorene Allio -- Comment on "Institutional structures, labor interests, and evolving privatization bargains in Poland" / Bartlomiej Kaminski -- Privatization as institutional change in Hungary / László Urbán -- Comment on "Privatization as institutional change in Hungary" / Kálmán Mizsei -- Marketization and government credibility in Shanghai : federalist and local corporatist explanations / Steven Lewis -- Federalist and local corporatist theories : a comment on an empirical test / Victor Nee -- Learning about the economy : property rights and the collapse of the East German industrial economy / Hannes Wittig -- Misinformation, insecure property rights, and the collapse of the East German economy / Susanne Lohmann -- Post-communist privatization as a test of theories of institutional change / Lorene Allio ... [and others] -- Explaining the complexity of institutional change / Jack Knight and Douglass C. North.

The Political Economy of Property Rights reports on comparative research into the transformation of property rights in post-communist countries and China. Two important theoretical questions unify the contributions: what aspects of political systems give credibility to systems of property rights? What can be learned from the transformation of property rights in post-communist countries about the large-scale change of economic institutions? The contributors consider the credibility of property rights as arising from the strategic interaction of political and economic actors, and they apply this perspective and test its implications using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. Overall, the volume demonstrates the value of coordinated cross-national research by area specialists sharing a common focus on questions of political economy.