ABSTRACT
REFORMERS PLANNING THE ESTABLISHMENT of market-based business practices believed that the enactment and enforcement of ground rules would somehow assure the implementation and success of the process. To this end, three regulations became structural imperatives for the change: the Law on State Enterprise increased the operating control of managers of state-owned enterprises; the privatization statutes encouraged conversion of state-owned enterprises to individually owned entities; and the most recently enacted 1998 law contained stipulations on insolvency, or bankruptcy. These ground rules were all created on the assumption that businesses would operate in compliance; in rare cases of noncompliance, the government would enforce the law.
