@article{Capitalism:1904,
      recid = {1904},
      author = {Orban, Krisztina},
      title = {The Inception of Capitalism Through the Lens of Firms},
      publisher = {The University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2019-06},
      pages = {104},
      abstract = {Using firm-level data, I analyze one of the largest  economic experiments of the twentieth century, the fall of  communism. After communism ended, post-communist economies  experienced a sharp decline and slow recovery of output.  This paper studies the output pattern of these countries  using microdata from Hungary from both communist and market  economy times (1986-1999). I propose a novel decomposition  of output change which allows me to quantify the role of  productivity, inputs and allocative efficiency in output  change. I find that the majority of the output drop is  accounted for by a reduction in labor input. In contrast,  the recovery in the 1990s largely reflects gains from  within-industry reallocation of inputs toward more  productive firms. Next, I explore the mechanisms through  which the fall in labor and the gains in allocative  efficiency operated. I find that during communism, a large  share of firms employed an inefficiently high number of  people given the wages firms paid. During the transition,  these firms saw their employment decrease 40% more relative  to other firms. In particular, these firms shed more  low-educated, blue-collar, older, and female workers. The  evidence is consistent with the interpretation that the  corporate sector in communism provided a social safety net  in addition to producing output. With regard to the  recovery, I provide evidence consistent with the bank  privatization having improved allocative efficiency of  capital by removing frictions caused by state banks.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1904},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.1904},
}