Foreign direct investment in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary : a comparative study of the current legislation

The author's goal is to illuminate the current business legislation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) through a comparison of three countries from the region, namely, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.The present study is divided into four parts. The first part states the thesis itself, the goals, and the structure of the discussion.The second part provides the basic premises of the analysis, with emphasis on the current data on foreign investment in the three countries.The third part presents the core of the comparative study and deals with the following issues: basic foreign investment laws, including corporate laws, property rights of foreign persons, currency regimes. Among other important aspects, attention is paid to the following subjects: general treatment of FDI, foreign investment in corporate capital, branches of transnational corporations, forms of FDI, special procedures for banking and insurance, closed sectors for FDI, financing of investment, incentives of FDI, domestic and international guarantees for FDI etc. The set of criteria used to assess the compared legislation focuses primarily on the essential features of that legislation. This narrow approach is expedient in terms of the huge area that relates to foreign investment.The final part uses the findings of the comparative study of the relevant legislation in order to determine the reasons for the lagging interest of foreign investors in Bulgaria. These reasons are found not to be due to any deep-seated differences in the pertinent legislation, but rather to some other factors, such as historical, socio-cultural, and geopolitical.The law in the present work is stated as of 1 January 1994. (Abstract shortened by UMI.