Building Market Institutions in South Eastern Europe

Building Market Institutions in South Eastern Europe - a study of impediments to investment and private sector development in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro - yields fundamentally new insights for improving the region's business environment, economic development, and prospects for growth. It focuses on four core topics: - Business competition and economic barriers to entry and exit - Access to regulated utilities and services - Corporate ownership, transparency of business accounts, and access to finance - Mechanisms for commercial dispute resolution. Each topic is empirically investigated across all eight South Eastern European countries through the systematic use of data from multiple sources: - Official data from each country in the region - Results from two annual rounds of quantitative, firm-level surveys covering 1,600 firms - Results from 40 originally developed enterprise-level business case studies. The result is an innovative analysis of cross-country comparisons and the development of key policy challenges from a regional perspective. Building Market Institutions in South Eastern Europe, a collaborative effort between the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, offers important practical insights for all policymakers and observers concerned with the future of South Eastern Europe. It makes concrete recommendations for reforms that would ease the constraints on domestic and foreign investment, an essential step in sustaining growth and reducing poverty in the region.