The economic impact of privatisation is hard to assess. This paper extends the analysis of Florio (2004) in four directions. It argues that a welfare assessment of privatisation must include an evaluation of the performance of public enterprises in light of their originally broad set of...

In this paper we examine the emergence over the last two decades in the EU of a dominant policy paradigm on the reform of network industries. We consider the broad recommendations by the OECD and the European Commission, and the Directives adopted by the European Union on the reform of some...

The British privatisations were concentrated on the infrastructure industries of transport, communications and energy. It is important to assess the efficiency impact in a long-term context. The Milan study goes some way towards this but even better is to compare different countries of the...

While most economists usually believe that privatization policy is socially beneficial, it faces increasing opposition in several countries. In this paper we wish to discover the ingredients in a recipe for privatization discontent. To do so we focus on Latin America, where there is wide...

The paper shows that privatisation can contribute to the decrease of net public debt, but at the same time can decrease the Public Sector Net Worth. This is defined as the difference between public sector assets and liabilities. The UK in the 1980s and 1990s is an example of parallelism between...

This papers discusses the privatization of Telecom Italia over ten years, from divestiture to three subsequent changes of ownership control. Why has the governance of one of the most promising of the former nationalized industries been so unstable? The turn of events suggests that the evolution...

Secondo Laffont (2005), in presenza di agenda privata dei politici, ed in particolare di corruzione, con regolatori a loro volta corrompibili e ispezioni costose, i governi dei PVS hanno una funzione non lineare di reazione verso la privatizzazione, a forma di U rovesciata, dipendente dal grado...

Starting from an industry where production is provided by a public monopolist, we look at the effects on the consumers' surplus of a sequence of reforms in network industry. Using a simple comparative statics framework, we find indifference conditions in consumers' surplus between respectively...

Assessing the welfare impact of a policy on the scale of the British privatisation programme is a daunting task. Four sets of issues raised in the impressive study by Florio et al of the British privatisation programme merit further discussion. One such set of issues relates to the different...