scispace - formally typeset
Open AccessPosted Content

The Privatisation of Public Assets as an Economic Policy Instrument: Private versus Public Ownership of Companies - Empirical Evidence and Considerations for Industrial Location Policy

Michael Böheim
- 01 Dec 2011 - 
- Vol. 16, Iss: 4, pp 244-255
TLDR
Boeheim et al. as mentioned in this paper investigated the theoretical foundations and mutual relations between private and government ownership of companies and investigated which extent of government withdrawal from state-owned enterprises would be optimal from the perspective of industrial location policy.
Abstract
The existence of competitive markets is an important prerequisite for privatisation to be successful from a macroeconomic perspective. For this reason it is a vital task of the government to ensure well-functioning free-market competition or (re-)establish it by means of the corresponding regulation and competition policy. There is a pronounced public concern over companies providing services of general interest ("Daseinsvorsorge"), which may justify a permanent strategic investment of the government as a core shareholder. There is no need, either on grounds of company law or from an economic perspective, for a more far-reaching government involvement in companies to protect the public interest. This study is conceived as a series of three articles. The first article (http://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/pubid/42850) dealt with the theoretical foundations and mutual relations between private and government ownership of companies. This second part focuses on the empirical evidence and investigates which extent of government withdrawal from state-owned enterprises would be optimal from the perspective of industrial location policy. Finally, the third article (forthcoming) will be dedicated to the practical implementation of privatisation projects and conclusions for economic policy. ● The author is thankful to Gunther Tichy for useful and constructive comments ● The data were processed and analysed with the assistance of Elisabeth Neppl-Oswald ● E-mail adresses: Michael.Boeheim@wifo.ac.at, Elisabeth.Neppl-Oswald@wifo.ac.at

read more

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Posted Content

The Privatisation of Public Assets as an Economic Policy Instrument: Private versus Public Ownership of Companies - the Practical Implementation of Privatisation Projects and Economic Policy Conclusions

TL;DR: Boeheim et al. as discussed by the authors presented a series of three articles published in WIFO's Austrian Economic Quarterly in autumn 2011 and spring 2012, dealing with the theoretical foundations and mutual relations between private and government ownership of companies, whereas the second part focused on the empirical evidence and investigated which extent of government withdrawal from state-owned enterprises would be optimal from the perspective of industrial location policy.
Journal Article

Major Public Enterprises in Austria

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on 10 major public enterprises in Austria, which is a country with a long tradition of nationalized industries and present first hand results on the performance of the selected Austrian public enterprises for the years from 2008 to 2014.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors survey the literature examining the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the types of privatization, if and by how much privatization has improved the performance of former SOEs in nontransition and transition countries, how investors in privatizations have fared, and the impact of privatization on the development of capital markets and corporate governance.
Journal ArticleDOI

Government Ownership of Banks

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that government ownership is large and pervasive and higher in countries with low levels of per capita income, backward financial systems, interventionist and inefficient governments, and poor protection of property rights.
Journal ArticleDOI

Ownership and Performance in Competitive Environments: A Comparison of the Performance of Private, Mixed, and State-Owned Enterprises

TL;DR: In fact, with the exception of two studies that examine Indonesia and Tanzania, no study has explicitly compared the effect of ownership while controlling for relevant factors as mentioned in this paper, except for two studies.
Journal ArticleDOI

State-Owned and Privately Owned Firms: An Empirical Analysis of Profitability, Leverage, and Labor Intensity

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report further empirical evidence on the relative efficiency of public and private enterprises and study the performance of government-owned and privately-owned corporations over longer time periods.
Journal ArticleDOI

Ownership versus competition: Efficiency in public enterprise*

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the relative importance of contestable ownership in inducing technical (if not allocative) efficiency is likely to increase as major product markets have continued to become more concentrated in most countries (see, for example, Hart and Clarke, 1980).
Related Papers (5)