We study how ownership affects productivity. Privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was a major economic reform during China's rapid growth, but its true impact remains controversial. Although private firms seem more productive than SOEs, the government selectively privatized (or...

This paper investigates the concentration of access to safe water across income levels in Bolivia. In particular, it focuses on how privatisation has changed coverage, affordability and the concentration of access to water on the part of the poor. We compare the performance of cities in which...

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...

This paper empirically investigates the differences in the motives of raising privatisation proceeds for a panel of EU countries from 1990 to 2000. More specifically, we test whether privatisations can be mainly interpreted (a) as ingredients of a larger reform package of economic liberalisation...

The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both...

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...

This paper examines the restructuring of state assets in markets deregulated by privatizations and investment liberalizations. We show that the government has a stronger incentive to restructure than the buyer: A firm restructuring only takes into account how much its own profit will increase....

International organizations promote privatization as precondition for economic development. But is there really too little privatization? This political economy model asks for the incentives of governments to privatize or restructure a state-owned firm. Different government types are compared to...

The privatisation policy pursued in the UK by Mrs Thatcher's government (1979-1990) and subsequently by Mr Major's government (1990-1997) was the largest experiment in public divestitures among capitalist economies. It had a deep impact on economic policy-making world wide, and was vastly...

We investigate the impact of differences in privatisation method on national economic performance in transition economies. Our approach is to estimate, using dynamic panel data methods, a growth equation over 23 countries for the period 1990-2001. Among our results, we find that mass...