Our Senior Research Fellow Balint Magyar and Junior Research Fellow Balint Madlovics will give an online lecture at Sorbonne University, entitled Post-Communist Predation: Modeling Reiderstvo Practices in Contemporary Predatory States.

While the economics of predatory states has been at the center of an emerging discussion, a rich body of literature on predation already exists in the scholarship on post-communist regimes. The scholars offer a glimpse into that literature, developing (1) a typology of coercive corporate raiding (“reiderstvo”) and (2) a model for understanding the logic of contemporary predatory states. The typology starts from the original form of reiderstvo, carried out by criminal groups (“black raiding”), and introduces the concepts of “grey” and “white raiding”. They identify “centrally led corporate raiding” as a form of state predation not considered in public choice models, despite the fact that it exemplifies the functioning of contemporary authoritarian regimes. Expanding the models of Leeson (J Inst Theor Econ (JITE) 163:467–482, 2007) and Vahabi (Public Choice 168:153–175, 2016), we show how centrally led corporate raiding can be incorporated into the discussion of predatory states. They provide illustrations by offering two examples from the predatory state of contemporary Hungary, the case of an outdoor advertising company (ESMA) and the case of the banking sector.

The lecture will start at 2:30pm CET on Friday, February 18. If you are interested, you may join here.