Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises that are central players in U.S. secondary mortgage markets. Over the past decade, these institutions have amassed enormous mortgage- and non-mortgage-oriented investment portfolios that pose significant interest-rate risks to the...

Hierarchical firms are enterprises with rigid internal job ladders. We examine the state enterprise as the prototypical hierarchical firm. In the state enterprise, promotion of employees through the internal hierarchy is determined by the workers’ allocation of time between rent seeking and...

Personale Versorgungsbetriebe bieten personalintensive Dienstleistungen an, auf die ihre nicht unbedingt selbst zahlenden Kunden angewiesen sind und teilweise sogar einen Rechts­anspruch haben. Es handelt sich um personenzentrierte Dienstleistungsbetriebe mit einer gewissen Größe und...

Leistungsorientierte Vergütungssyteme können mit nicht-intendierten Effekten einhergehen, die in der Personalwirtschaftslehre unter dem Stichwort der Motivationsverdrängung diskutiert werden. Die Evaluierung der Wirkung leistungsorientierter Vergütungssysteme durch Mitarbeiterbefragungen...

The issues of privatization (and sometimes deregulation) have been reviewed in a large literature on the various aspects of privatization, that has emphasized the potential efficiency gains. Hence, we provide some theoretical reasoning why privatization is useful as well as profitable for an...

Schriftliche Fassung eines Vortrages anlässlich der Tagung zum Thema Deregulierung und Privatisierung: Erfahrungen Problem-Potentiale des Wirtschaftspolitischen Ausschusses des Vereins für Socialpolitik vom 27.-29.03.2001 an der Universität St. Gallen, St. Gallen, CH.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are often vertically integrated firms which operate in key industries like transport, telecommunication and power generation. They provide an infrastructure and invest in its quality. We discuss the effects of liberalization and their privatization which can be...

The 1990s have witnessed unprecedented attempts at privatizing state owned enterprises in virtually all OECD democracies. This contribution analyzes the differences in the privatization proceeds raised by EU- and OECD-countries between 1990 and 2000. It turns out that privatizations are part of...

There is a huge body of literature in the social sciences that deals with the privatization of public enterprises in developed OECD countries after World War II. In the first part of this article, we present and critically examine empirical findings of comparative inquiries on the factors...

Political connections between firms and autocratic regimes are not secret and often even publicly displayed in many developing economies. We argue that tying a firm's available rent to a regime’s survival acts as a credible commitment forcing entrepreneurs to support the government and to...