Job creation, job destruction, and growth of newly established, privatized, and state-owned enterprises in transition economies: Survey evidence from Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania

This paper reports new and unique firm-level survey evidence to investigate the microeconomic nature of the growth process and structural change in three transition countries, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. In particular we investigate gross job creation and destruction in newly established private (de novo) firms and "traditional" ones, both state-owned and privatized firms, and find that the de novo private firms are the most dynamic in terms of job creation. After controlling for size and life-cycle effects, we find that de nova private firms consistently outperform the start-owned and privatized enterprises. In addition, we iind that state-owned enterprises and privatized firms hare on average the same firm-level employment growth. (C) 1998 Academic Press.