Voucher privatization is a privatization

Privatization

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...

 method where citizens are given or can inexpensively buy a book of voucher

Voucher

A voucher is a bond which is worth a certain monetary value and which may be spent only for specific reasons or on specific goods. Examples include housing, travel, and food vouchers...

s that represent potential shares in any state-owned company. Voucher privatization has mainly been used in the early-to-mid 1990s in the transition economies

Transition economy

A transition economy or transitional economy is an economy which is changing from a centrally planned economy to a free market. Transition economies undergo economic liberalization, where market forces set prices rather than a central planning organization and trade barriers are removed,...

 of Central

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

 and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 - countries such as Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

 and Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

.

A way in which vouchers are used for partial privatization is the government requiring taxpayers to pay for a service whether they use it or not and allowing them to choose their service provider. Each citizen is given vouchers allowing them to use that service (or a certain amount of it) at government expense. Examples include education voucher

Education voucher

A school voucher, also called an education voucher, is a certificate issued by the government, which parents can apply toward tuition at a private school , rather than at the state school to which their child is assigned...

s and shadow tolling. A disadvantage of this type of system, relative to full privatization, is that there is no incentive for citizens to seek to reduce the cost of the service they use below the voucher amount.

See also

• History of post-Soviet Russia
  History of post-Soviet Russia
  With the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 29 May 1991, the Russian Federation became an independent country.Russia was the largest of the fifteen republics that made up the Soviet Union, accounting for over 60% of the gross domestic product and over 50% of the Soviet population. Russians also...
  
  
• Viktor Kožený
  Viktor Kožený
  Viktor Kožený is a Czech-born fugitive financier. He graduated from Harvard in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in economics. Viktor Kožený is officially an Irish citizen imprisoned in the Bahamas in 2005 but released in 2007. Efforts to bring him to justice stem from both the Czech Republic and the...
  
  
• Privatization in Russia
  Privatization in Russia
  Russian privatization was the reform consisting in privatization of state-owned industrial assets that took place in Russia in the 1990s, during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, where private ownership of enterprises had been illegal for a long...
  
  
• Svit

External links

• David Ellerman, "Lessons From East Europe’s Voucher Privatization", The Capital Ownership Group (virtual think tank).