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Post-Soviet Property Rights Questions
Who has residual rights of control over enterprise or firm after all contractual obligations have been met?
In past government ministries, planners, administrators, & ultimately KPSU exercised control over residuals
Who decides what to do with enterprise assets?
Previously enterprise directors highly constrained by their ministries and central planners over asset management
Question of factory or enterprise ÒmanagerÓ or Òfactory directorÓ or Òenterprise directorÓ?
Taking orders vs. managing
Òrisk avoidanceÓ vs. Òentrepreneurial riskÓ behaviors
Who decides what to do with generated income?
In past ministry officials had major influence & control
In past not much of an issue due to Òsoft-budgetÓ constraints
Decision making skills & behavior must generate such income first!

Tensions between central administrators and individual enterprise directors
Administrators & directors all part of nomenklatura class
Question of rights of administrators vs. directors
In transition a power shift has occurred from central administrators –> enterprise directors
Privatization – de facto spontaneous privatization by bureaucracy, nomenklatura, and former Party officials
Question of privatization as:
Kleptocracy / theft with monopolistic inefficiency remaining intact?
Efficiency gains?
Wealth personalization?

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms
Joint Ventures
1988 Joint Venture legislation
Up to 49% foreign ownership
Apparent goal of importing and modernizing technological base of such firms
Output of JVs not subject to state orders or goszakazy
All profits exempt from Soviet (remember 1988 law) taxes for first 2 years
Lack of convertible ruble retarded JVs
October 1990 decree, allowed for 100% foreign ownership

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Foreign Investment
May 1991 Union parliament adopts – Principles of Legislation on Foreign Investments in the USSR
Reaffirms right of 100% foreign capital
Expanded range of foreign investors allowed:
Juristic persons, stateless persons, foreign states, international organizations
Types of allowable enterprises
Joint Ventures
Joint-Stock companies
Limited-liability companies
Partnerships
Individual proprietorship firms
Granted concessionary rights for development of natural resources to foreign investors
Addressed questions of the establishment of and procedures governing activities of enterprises within so-called Òfree-economic zonesÓ (FEZ)

Figure 8.3 The 83 internal political units in Russian in 2010.
(Blinnikov, p. 108).
Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
FEZ
1989 cities of Vyborg and Novgorod first established FEZs
By end of 1989 more than 60 petitons for FEZs filed
MoscowÕs main international airport - Sheremetyevo is a FEZ
FEZ –> tax breaks, lenient customs regulations
1990 in Far East all of Sakhalin Island became a FEZ
Nakhodka-Vostochnyy FEZ
Greater Vladivostok FEZ proposed including Nakhodka-Vostochnyy
Other FEZs proposed – Khabarovsk FEZ, Amur FEZ, Yakutian FEZ, international Tyuman River
Often FEZs were backdrop for center VS periphery/local conflicts over control over natural resources and FDI (foreign direct investments)

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Reform of State Enterprises and Cooperatives
Jan. 1988 - Law on State Enterprises enacted
Decentralized management
Increased autonomy
Increased flexibility of state enterprises
Autonomy increased for firms to set production targets
Conflicted with persistence of compulsory state orders (goszakazy)
      state orders still accounted for 90% of production in 1988
Allowed workersÕ voice in selection of management (ex. RAF - IGRA)
1988 Law on Cooperatives
Created powerful incentives for state enterprises to create cooperatives
Exempted Coops from compulsory plan assignments
State firms created profitable sideline business without direct central governmental control and influence
Coops granted significant freedom to set wages and prices (e.g., directors set own wages and that of allied nomenclatura workers
Allowed creation of Coop banks
Coop banks increased financial flexibility of founding state enterprise ÒkoopÓ partners
By beginning of 1991 80% of all Soviet Coops where kooperativy pri or attached to state enterprises & produced 80% of total goods and services sold by coops

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Reform of State Enterprises and Cooperatives
1988 Law on Cooperatives continued:
By August 1991 - 255,000 registered coops with 6.5 million employees, 42 billion rubleÕs worth of output in first half of 1991
November 1989 Leasing Law
Entire enterprise could be leased with 2/3 of workers vote in favor of such reorganization
Coop thus paid rent and depreciation costs to its ÒstateÓ parents on equipment and buildings - high potential for profit and theft of state assets
Coops could purchase equipment outright with their earnings, result –> purchase on the cheap from parent ÒstateÓ firms
Loophole for nomenklatura, directors and ÒmafiaÓ black marketers, to end up owning such coop firms
Bribing workers with promises of pay raises and job security to secure votes favoring conversion
1990 Law on Enterprises
Owner of enterprise had exclusive right to choose management personnel
OK in Western firms, but in Russian transitional context weakened the political and economic positions of workers and strengthened those of administrators and ÒmanagersÓ or the likely new owners.

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Small Enterprises  (malyye predpriyatiya)
1989 Temporary Statutes on Small Enterprises
August 1990 - Decree on Creation & Adoption of Small Enterprises
Defined by # of employees: 15 in retail trade, 200 in construction
Both laws allowed for separating off portions of existing state enterprises
Greater operational and financial freedom than state enterprise parents
1990 decree granted total tax exemption until beginning of 1991
1990 decree allowed small enterprises to have access to centrally allocated inputs of parents state enterprises
January 1991 federal law on taxation granted small enterprises preferential tax treatment.
Small enterprise profits invested in labor training, new technology and capital improvements were exempted from taxes
Initial 2-year tax holiday on profits from building materials manufacture, construction, consumer goods, and food processing
75% of profit tax liability for first year and 50% for second year forgiven on profits from all other activities.
Non-exempt Co-ops precluded from tax concessions on production of consumer goods
One result – many Co-ops registered a ÒSmall enterprisesÓ in response to differential taxation and other legal provisions of small enterprises vs Co-ops.

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Joint-Stock Companies
June 19, 1990, USSR Council of Ministers Statute on Joint-Stock Companies and Companies with Limited Liability
Allowed existing state enterprises to reorganize into open or closed joint-stock companies under certain conditions
Open  joint-stock companies - stock could be held by workers, managers, various levels of government, other state enterprises, & private individuals
Closed joint-stock - only workers, managers, and state could hold stock
Both workers and state organ authorized for reorganization purpose would have to reach joint decision on reorganization
Example, Menatep Interbank Association, poorly understood by stockholders
Law on Inventions in the USSR (May 1991)
Strengthened economic, legal, and organizational principles for protection of inventions under various forms of ownership with a market economy
Incentives for innovations in medicine and ecology were increased
Rights and benefits for firms adopting innovations were expanded
No Patent Court or state patents department

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Securities and Stock Exchanges
Draft law on securities and stock exchanges first considered by USSR Supreme Soviet on July 10, 1991
Adopted December 1991 after Russian securities market was in operation
Goal was to protect stockholders, from incompetence and dishonesty
Stock issuers prior to sale or issuing of stocks or securities required to publish in at least 2 newspapers preliminary comprehensive and absolutely trustworthy information about the securities and the financial position of the entity or persons issuing them
Introduces legal concept of property qualification
Question of stockholder protection or new arena for bureaucratic graft and corruption
Within months of passage, Russian stock market with registered securities totaling more than 100 billion rubles was facing liquidity crisis
Causes of liquidity crisis:
Few joint-stock companies had tangible or real assets to back up their securities
Joint-stock companies ÒinvestmentÕ companies
Nearly all stock being sold on secondary market were overvalued
Weak to nearly non-existent financial infrastructure and lengthy delays in payments under high inflationary conditions made any business deal risky
Liquidity crisis was rapidly developing in current accounts for current supplies
Virtually no system for collection and public disclosure of financial information
What would financial disclosure statement of Òsoft-budgetÓ state enterprise look like?
Little time elapsed for development of reliable business reputation
Russian statutes on securities, criminal and administrative codes still lacking
No unified policy for purchasing and selling of securities among former Òruble zoneÓ republics

Key Legislative Reforms - new property and organizational forms cont.
Commodities Exchanges: Background events
Systematic reduction of 3 long-term Soviet institutions:
Gosplan (State Planning Committee)
Goskomtsen (State Price Committee)
Gossnab ( State Committee for Material Supply)
May 1990 first Commodity Exchange - Moscow Commodities Exchange
By Oct. 1991 more than 400 commodity exchanges operating
By Oct. 1992 ~1,000 commodity exchanges
Wholesale auction houses / markets even Òflea marketÕ like
Function of Commodity exchanges
1) connecting commodity buyers and sellers
2) price discovery
Sources of commodity exchange revenue streams
1) capitalize exchanges by selling shares for hard currency
2) sell brokerage seats or rights to transect business deals
3) sales commissions from 0.5 to 5.0% on transactions, brokers get ~40% of commissions

Eurasian Macro-tectonic features
Yalta - Crimean trust fault
Zhiguli Zapavednik - middle Volga
North Caucasus - hum?  A very good cash crop
Hum continued!
Chechnya - Caucasus anticline
Azerbaydzhan - vineyard
Lake Baykal - graben (Kibalchik & CZB)
Lake Baykal -normal fault
 escarpments
Lake Baykal fault escarpments
Lake Baykal - serious conversations
Is seeing believing?
Tantsavayet na Baykale
Exhilaration after second
 banya on same day