Privatisation in Serbia: Evidence and Analysis Boz ˇidar Cerovic ´ 1 and Aleksandra Petrini 2 1 Faculty of Economics, Belgrade University, Belgrade, Serbia 2 University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy (E-mail: cerovi@one.ekof.bg.ac.yu, aleksandrapetrini@libero.it) A collection of papers written by researchers at the Faculty of Economics at Belgrade University has been put together by Boz ˇidar Cerovic ´ to constitute a compendium that should prove extremely useful for readers interested in the various topics covered by privatisation in Serbia. Until a few years ago, Serbia was a country characterised by a high degree of political and economic instability, lagging behind many other countries in transition in implementing fundamental economic and political reforms. During the 1990s the transition to a market economy and a multiparty democracy was de facto blocked by political, ideological, economic, and international motives. Ownership transformation had been on the agenda since 1989 but, as stressed in the Foreword by Milica Uvalic, the maintenance of the ambiguous concept of social property together with other factors such as the noncompulsory nature of privatisation, limited inflows of foreign direct investments, low and declining purchasing power of the population, and frequent changes in legislation rendered the conversion of self-manage- ment into property rights very slow and difficult. Thanks to the political changes in October 2000, Serbia, marking a radical break with the past, has undertaken forward economic and political reforms in practically all areas. In accordance with the Privatisation Law enacted in 2001, the voluntary insiders privatisation model was replaced by cash-based sales through public tenders or public auctions. The book presented here, Privatisation in Serbia, deals predominantly with this recent phase of tran- sition, exploring the effects of the newest privatisation wave. However, most of the chapters also outline previous developments referring to the effects of the privatisation plans of the 1990s. As the editor of the book, Boz ˇidar Cerovic ´, underlines in his acknowl- edgements, the volume is part of a broader research project conducted Transition Studies Review (2007) 14 (2): 399–404 DOI 10.1007/s11300-007-0151-2 Printed in The Netherlands Transition Studies Review Ó Springer-Verlag 2007