This chapter concludes a book that grew out of a 2015 conference hosted by the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, which brought together defense industry leaders, academics, and lawyers to discuss ethical challenges to the defense industry. Authors from the...

The fundamental feature of private contracting is its relational nature. When faced with unforeseen or unexpected circumstances, private parties, as long as the relation remains worthwhile, adjust their required performance without the need for costly renegotiation or formal recontracting....

Italys first Fascist government applied a large-scale privatization policy between 1922 and 1925. The government privatized the state monopoly of match sale, eliminated the State monopoly on life insurances, sold most of the State-owned telephone networks and services to private firms,...

State owned enterprises and fiscal adjustment: an analysis of the contribution of the federal companies to macroeconomic equilibrium - This article expose a historical and empirical analysis of the transformations in the administration of the Brazilian state owned enterprises during the last 20...

This paper offers a comprehensive evaluation of the welfare impact of a policy usually regarded as highly successful and vastly imitated worldwide: the privatisation policy pursued in the UK by MrsThatcher's government (1979-1990) and subsequently by Mr Major's government (1990-1997) The British...

The paper discusses possible interpretations of the fall of the public enterprise in the economic ideology of the European left-wing parties. The first section rejects the claim that a technological shift has weakened the case for the nationalization of natural monopolies. Economies of scale in...

This paper offers a review and discussion of the evidence concerning the underpricing and long run performance of British PIPOs (Privatisation Initial Public Offerings) between 1977-1996, i.e. from the first privatisation under a Labour Government (British Petroleum), until the last ones by a...

A wide range of services provided by the public sector are credence goods, i.e., services for which the producer has private information whether a certain treatment is needed or not. This paper studies how ownership affects the incentives for producers to reveal such information to public...

I develop a model of public sector contracting based on the multitask framework by Holmström and Milgrom (1991). In this model, an agent can put effort into increasing the quality of a service or reducing costs. Being residual claimants, private owners have stronger incentives to cut costs than...

What is the best way to deliver various goods and services in the advanced complex economy? What is the appropriate division of labor among the state, the private for-profit, and the nonprofit sectors? This paper explores these questions relative to the well-being of consumers, and offers a set...