Political economy of the Slovak capitalism from perspective of the institutional and evolutionary economics

The introductory parts of the paper analyse development of a local variety of capitalism in Slovakia from the institutional and evolutionary perspective. In early transition period privatisation policies were aimed at development of a liberal version of capitalism, based on fluid capital markets. These policies were confronted with institutional legacies of previous regimes. Privatisation, however, had major impact on structure of capital ownership and management. Next chapters compare contemporary Slovak capitalism with varieties found in other OECD economies. Major elements of institutional framework (labour market, business and financial environments) are subject to factor analysis. OECD member countries are compared via index of market coordination. Slovakia appears to be a market economy with middle levels of strategic market coordination and similar to Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Reliance on bank finance and dual economy are another distinctive features of the contemporary Slovak capitalism.