We examine both quantity and price competition between a number of profit-maximizing firms and a state-controlled enterprise (SCE). The objective function of the latter is strategically defined by a welfare-maximizing government which weighs the SCE’s profits relative to consumer surplus and...

This study investigates the possible sources of distortions in an international mixed oligopoly. We extend the existing linear/quadratic model to a general framework and show that a public enterprise may either serve as a regulatory device or may itself create an additional level of distortion....

In order to analyze the privatization policies undertaken by the national and regional governments, we consider a horizontal differentiation model with price competition in which a country consists of two regions of different sizes. We show that public-sector intervention by either the national...

In this paper we introduce product demand uncertainty in a mixed oligopoly model and reexamine the nature of sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) when firms decide in the first stage whether to lead or follow in the subsequent quantity-setting game. In the non-stochastic setting, Pal (1998)...

We examine changes in market values and accounting returns for a sample of publicly traded Chinese firms around announcements of block-share transfers among government agencies (“State Bureaucrats”), market-oriented State-owned enterprises (“MOSOEs”) and private investors (“Private...

The paper examines the response of banks to privatization. Using data on all state-owned banks for the period 1990-2006, the findings indicate that fully state-owned banks are significantly less profitable than partially privatized ones. The improvements in performance by partially privatized...

The analysis employs data on federal Government-owned public enterprises (PSEs) since the 1980s that encompasses the partial privatization program to examine the likelihood of privatization. The results indicate that employment-intensive, high-paying but less profitable firms are more likely to...

In this paper it is argued that privatization is not the only alternative to public ownership. Adopting the incomplete contract approach, it is shown that partial privatization may well be the optimal ownership structure. While in the standard incomplete contract model joint ownership is usually...

This paper analyzes the human capital training strategies adopted between the 1850s and 1930s by railroad companies in Mexico and Chile. These two countries enable one to contrast the different routes taken by the same type of firm, technology and labor force. A propos of this, we suggest that...

For several decades public enterprises have been criticised for their poor economic performance. Many economists take it as “conventional wisdom” that publicly owned enterprises are inefficient by their very nature. This seemed to be proved by what is probably the most cited survey...