Ownership Structures

In this paper, we analyse the effects of the massive Russian privatisation programme on the ownership of Russian firms and on the behaviour of formerly state owned enterprises. A large random sample of Russian firms is used to investigate the emerging ownership structures, patterns of control and enterprise behaviour. We find that workers have become the dominant owners in a majority ig Russian private firms; 65% of the total as against 19% being manager owned and 16% of being outsider owned. Higher- ownership appears to confer significantly more influence over decision-making on managers and outsiders, but not on workers. Most importantly however, we find no evidence that privatisation affects any major area of enterprise behaviour or performance.