The Treuhand Privatizations: Buyer Selection, Regional Consequences, and Political Scarring Effects

柏林围墙倒塌后，东德国经历了可以说是历史上最广泛的私有化计划。德国政府成立了一个公共机构，Treuhandanstalt（简称：Treuhand），以剥离前德意志民主共和国（GDR）的整个国有经济。所有公司都在不到五年的时间内私有化或清算。经济研究的现状与这一主题的历史和政治意义不成比例。关于东德私有化的研究非常罕见，可能是由于数据缺口。拟议的研究项目的目的是调查的过程和后果的Treuhand私有化。在国际上，该项目有助于编写关于私有化进程和私有化后果的更广泛的文献。总体目标包括三个独立的研究模块，每个模块都涉及新数据集和经验设计的构建。所有模块都扩展了申请人的初步工作，该工作已经生成了Treuhand公司的独特数据集，包括行政公司登记，档案来源和公司调查。第一个模块探讨了Treuhand如何决定哪些潜在买家成功收购了这些公司。最近开放的Treuhand文件允许利用一个全球独特的设置，其中获胜和失败的出价被记录在一起。通过评估哪些投标组成部分最能预测中标，这些结果进一步与公共采购研究产生共鸣。分析还探讨了为什么大多数Treuhand公司被卖给西德买家。在第二个模块中，该项目调查了Treuhand决定的区域后果。因此，它扩大了对私有化辩论的区域公司溢出效应的文献。由于私有化和清算案例的数量非常大，而且私有化率存在明显的外生变化，因此Treuhand的设定提供了丰富的设定。由于私有化发生在西方机构和部分现有的市场环境中，因此与当前的区域发展政策有许多相似之处。第三，该项目努力确定私有化决策对政治态度的影响。文献已经确定，选民对私有化的偏好取决于他们对这些计划的经验。然而，目前还不清楚经验是否也会更普遍地改变投票行为和民主态度。研究表明，进口竞争加剧会产生长期的政治影响，私有化决定也可能留下类似的“伤疤效应”。私有化往往伴随着失业，这可能导致剩余人口的外迁和人口结构变化。这些长期后果可能有助于解释民粹主义运动在东德国的兴起。

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced what was arguably history's most extensive privatization program. The German government instated a public agency, the Treuhandanstalt (short: Treuhand), to divest the entire state-owned economy of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). All firms were privatized or liquidated within less than five years. The current state of economic research is disproportionate to the topic’s historical and political significance. Studies of East German privatizations are strikingly rare, likely due to data gaps. The aim of the proposed research project is to investigate the process and consequences of the Treuhand privatizations. Internationally, the project contributes to a broader literature on privatization processes and privatization consequences. The overarching goal subsumes three independent research modules, each involving the construction of new datasets and empirical designs. All modules extend the preliminary work of the applicant that has generated a unique dataset of Treuhand firms, comprising administrative firm registers, archival sources, and firm surveys. The first module examines how the Treuhand decided which prospective buyers were successful in acquiring the companies. The recent opening of the Treuhand files allows exploiting a globally unique setting where winning and defeated bids were documented alongside. By assessing which bid components are most predictive for successful bids, these results further resonate with research on public procurement. The analysis also explores why most Treuhand firms were sold to West German buyers. In the second module, the project investigates the regional consequences of the Treuhand’s decisions. It thereby expands the literature on regional firm spillovers towards the privatization debate. The Treuhand setting provides a rich setting as the number of privatization and liquidation cases was extremely large and plausibly exogenous variation in privatization rates is available. There are many parallels to current policies on regional development as privatizations took place within Western institutions and partially existing market environments.Third, the project strives to establish the consequences of privatization decisions for political attitudes. Literature has established that voters’ preferences for privatization depend on their experiences with such programs. However, it remains unknown whether experiences also alter voting behaviors and democratic attitudes more generally. As research documents long-lasting political effects of increasing import competition, privatization decisions may leave similar “scarring effects”. Privatizations are often associated with job losses, which may lead to outmigration and demographic shifts in the remaining population. These longer-term consequences may help explain the rise of populist movements in East Germany.