ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature on housing policy reforms to develop a theoretical framework for analysis. It attempts to explain the political logic behind privatization and rent deregulation. The chapter presents a number of hypotheses and then attempts to test them with quantitative data analysis. After the revolutions of 1989, states throughout Eastern Europe began to marketize their housing sectors. Two reforms were at the forefront of the efforts-privatization of state-owned housing and deregulation of rents. The chapter explains cross-national differences in these reforms. It argues why some countries privatized and deregulated more than others. The chapter discusses considerable support for the thesis that demand-side factors influence housing policy more than economic factors. The dependent variable, privatization, is measured as the percentage of state or enterprise-owned apartments privatized to sitting tenants. Though privatization had begun in several countries before 1989, restrictions were relaxed and the scope of privatization expanded throughout the region.
