Voucher Privatization

Who we are

Libertarian think tank

founded in 1989 during the
Velvet Revolution
• individual liberty
• free markets
• limited government
• peace

• OPkyselac.cz
Ukraine’s
economy
before the war

• Not good. :(
Compare to
other countries
Compare to
other countries
Not an excuse
to say others
also don’t grow
GDP – what is
it good for?

Everything!
But we must be
careful
 Creating employment's
a straightforward craft
When the nation's at war and there's
a draft
But we must be If every worker were staffed in the army
careful and fleet
We'd have full employment and nothin'
to eat
How easy is it
for Ukraine to
grow?
 Country End of GDP Slump size Year when
slump 1990
levels
reached
Lithuania 1994 85.56% 2003
What can we Georgia 1994 71.47% 2019

do? Armenia
Ukraine
1993
1997
57.29%
51.99%
2007
2006
Latvia 1993 46.61% 2005
• A big change has a big
cost at first Kazakhstan 1995 35.45% 2003
Russia 1996 31.62% 2012
• …but can be really Estonia 1994 30.02% 2001
beneficial. If the change Slovakia 1992 20.49% 1996
is the right one Slovenia 1992 14.54% 1996
Romania 1992 13.90% 1995
Bulgaria 1992 12.06% 2002
Hungary 1992 11.09% 1996
Finland 1993 10.94% 1997
Czechia 1991 10.25% 1995
Poland 1991 6.43% 1993
State-owned
enterprises
State-owned
enterprises
Privatize,
privatize,
privatize
 • Margaret Thatcher’s government privatized
two companies a year
Privatization • that would take us 1,647 years!

• The challenge is to privatize two companies

an hour
• that would take us 69 days
 • Auctioning off every company separately
Voucher takes too long
Privatization
• Ukraine is (relatively) very poor
• difficult to sell for money when there’s
none

• => Voucher privatization

 • British Columbia
Voucher
Privatization • Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia…
Voucher • Quick
Privatization • Bypasses existing (corrupt) structures
• Gives the property to “the people”
Advantages • The government doesn’t get money
• which it is institutionally incapable of spending efficiently
Voucher • Fraud (real or alleged) reflects badly on the
Privatization whole process
• “Winners” are traders, possibly the mose
Disadvantages hated group of people
• People have a weird notion of property
being “stolen” from its collective state
 • Authors (Klaus/Tříska, Balcerowicz…)
Voucher • many lessons may be learned
Privatization
• Academic sources:
• Andrei Shleifer, Robert Vishny
• Peter Boettke
Слава Україні!