Die Treuhand-Privatisierungen: Käuferauswahl, Regionale Auswirkungen und politische Scarring Effekte

• Antragsteller: Dr. Lukas Mergele
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Wirtschaftspolitik, Angewandte Volkswirtschaftslehre ; Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Förderung: Förderung von 2021 bis 2022
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 465830511

• Erstellungsjahr: 2023

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

This research project focused on the mass privatization of East German firms by the Treuhandanstalt agency following German reunification. The project was divided into three modules: the selection of buyers, the political consequences, and the regional economic consequences of the privatization. The principal investigator left academia partway through the project, but significant progress was made in the first two modules. It studied the effect of local firm privatizations and liquidations on election outcomes, finding that the socialist party experienced a revival in areas that underwent privatization. The module on buyer selection involved the digitization and manual extraction of information from the agency's executive board meetings and the tracking of bidders through Treuhand sources and trade registers. The module on regional consequences was prepared, but not completed due to budget constraints and the principal investigator's departure from academia.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• Privatizations Spark Socialist Backlash: Evidence from East Germany's Transformation. SSRN Electronic Journal (2022).
  Hager, Anselm; Hennicke, Moritz; Krause, Werner & Mergele, Lukas
  
• The big sell: Privatizing East Germany’s economy. Journal of Public Economics, 242, 105291.
  Mergele, Lukas; Hennicke, Moritz & Lubczyk, Moritz