liberalization is very unlikely to achieve its desired goals and can have devastating costs in the absence of effective regulation. A growing body of work on privatization (Guriev and Megginson 2007; Megginson 2005; Roland 2008) has also underlined how state asset divestment has generated suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes under the conditions of weak legal rules. Successful market reforms have thus been predicated upon the ability of governments to strengthen the overall framework regulating accounting standards, information disclosure and investment protection, all of which have been crucial to the functioning of an open and liberalized capital market. Similarly, privatization can only contribute towards capital market growth if it is coupled with sustained efforts to establish and improve legal and institutional rules designed to prevent oligopolistic or monopolistic practices in privatized sectors, minimise regressive redistribution effects and check rent-seeking on the part of new private owners.