Wiktor Patena

Post-Privatisation Corporate Performance in Poland. Evidence from Companies Privatized in 2008-2011

The 2008-2011 Polish privatization plan assumed that 740 enterprises would be privatized. The outcome of the plan implementation was 582 privatized companies, which is 78.64% of the initial plan. The Polish government assumed privatization’ revenue at the level of 54 billion PLN. Global financial situation and some privatization problems allowed reaching 44.02 billion PLN level, which was 81% of the planned value. The authors drew a broad picture of the privatization process and investigated the performance of 59 privatized companies, eventually focusing on a deeper analysis of three companies., and the United Kingdom, could collect up to 50% more revenue if they applied a unified tax on all consumption.

Latvia Trapped in an Exchange Rate Peg

CEEC-10, after the effort made to join the European Union, are now facing another challenge: replacing their national currencies with the euro. Each of them will have to take the entry test – the EU Maastricht convergence criteria. Recently, Baltic countries after a decade of spectacular economic growth experience inflation motivated problems. For countries having a currency board or fixed exchange rates high inflation may trigger a dangerous feedback between higher and higher growth and negative real interest rates. In 2007 Latvia was trapped in such a scenario. Latvian lat got very close to the weak end of the narrow fluctuation band for LVL/EUR. Latvijas Banka, however, immediately, took a set of measures that weakened the pressure on lat and were also aimed at lowering inflation and stabilizing the economic growth. So far the instruments used have been effective. Still, the threat persists.