How soft is the budget constraint for Yugoslav firms?

The purpose of this paper is to show that Yugoslav firms have also been subjected to massive, pervasive redistribution through a soft budget constraint. To quantify such redistribution, the authors focus particulary on the redistributive effects of holding financial assets and liabilities in an inflationary environment in which financial claims are generally not indexed. Analyzing firm-level data for Yugoslavia's manufacturing sector for 1986, they show that such flows, in contrast to those of other Eastern European economies, have been a far more important source of redistribution than taxes and subsidies. Although Yugoslavia's channels of redistribution differ significantly from those in other socialist economies, they share a common driving force: the pursuit of job and wage security. Producers of energy, food, and heavy manufactures, as well as less developed regions, have particulary benefited from the redistribution.