We consider the choice to privatize the provision of a public good in a hierarchical model with three layers: a Central Government, a decentralized agency and a (private or public) manager. In a good governance regime the privatization can be devolved upon the decentralized agency while it...

Beginning in the 1990s, an institutional perspective on development has become increasingly prominent in development thinking, captured in the mantra, “Institutions Matter,” or “Governance Matters.” Based on the assumption that “institutions matter”, there has been a massive surge in...

We consider the supply of a public good based on a publicly-owned facility. The Government has a choice between provision in-house and privatizing the facility and then outsourcing the production. In particular, we focus on corruption in the decision to privatize and on its effect on social...

We assembled a large panel of project-level technical and financial data as well as country-level economic, institutional, political, and governance variables to assess the determinants of private financing of infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies. Controlling for economic...

A common argument against privatization is that private providers will self-interestedly lobby to increase the size of their market. In this Article, I evaluate this argument, using, as a case study, the argument against prison privatization based on the possibility that the private prison...

We investigate whether privatization, competitive forces, and hardening of budget constraints have yet begun to play efficiency-enhancing roles in Russia. The empirical work is based on information from a 1994 survey of privatized and state-owned Russian firms, together representing around 10...

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...

Little is known about the effects of regime change on government workers' job satisfaction. Conventional theories of work satisfaction have identified various individual or organisational antecedents of public employees' well-being in many different contexts. In this study, we add an additional...

Outsourcing public services to private providers is heralded for increasing government efficiency. Yet, outsourcing also offers opportunities to circumvent employment regulations in the public sector. The praised flexibility that private contractors have to hire employees can also be used to...

Through a unique database on daily activities of municipal party secretaries, we find that they spend a significant part of their work time on political and propaganda activities, including organizing various meetings to promote the central government's spirit ideology. We find that officials...