This book was first published in 1992. For decades Yugoslavia had been developing its own model of socialism based on workers' self-management and the increasing use of the market mechanism. As a result, many scholars view the Yugoslav economy differently from other socialist systems. In this book, Dr Milica Uvalic demonstrates how some of the fundamental features of the Yugoslav economy have remained similar to those characterising other socialist economies. Dr Uvalic focuses on theoretical and empirical issues related to investment in Yugoslavia since 1965. She examines investment policies, sources of finance, macroeconomic performance, enterprise incentives, and current property reforms in relation to Western theory on investment behaviour in the labour-managed firm and Kornai's theory on socialist economies. In line with Kornai's theory, the author argues that investment reforms have not led to substantially changed enterprise behaviour, which illustrates the limited results to be expected from partial reforms in a socialist economy. The fundamental problems in Yugoslavia are thus generic to socialist economic systems, rather that the specific characteristic of self-management.

"Dr. Uvalic has done an excellent job in presenting the complexity and multidimensionality of these issues....I, therefore, strongly recommend Investment and Property Rights in Yugoslavia not only to social scientists for its wealthy empirical and theoretical content, but also to a business practitioner planning to expand into Yugoslavia...." Darek J. Klonowski, Canadian Slavonic Papers

"...a welcome affirmation of the role of institutions in evaluating economic systems....The book is a careful assessment of a wide spectrum of theoretical literature on property rights and their effect on investment. While Yugoslav theory and practice constitute the core of the analysis, the scope is much broader both theoretically and empirically than just the one country....Overall the book constitutes a significant contribution to critical evaluation of existing theories of self-management." Diane Flaherty, Slavic Review