Public Ownership: Concepts and Applications

Colin Mayer ()

No 182, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Public ownership is viewed as a restriction on the portfolio of equities held by investors. Three conditions are required to justify such restrictions. First, monitoring and coordination create concentration in supply or demand. Second, complete contracts must be infeasible or undesirable. Third, the creation of property rights may give rise to undesirable outcomes if demand in subsequent periods is uncertain. Using a multiperiod analysis, public ownership may be justified in circumstances in which considerations of flexibility outweigh those of commitment. The paper applies these ideas to an international analysis of ownership in several industries and finds that they are informative about both observed patterns and factors that are prompting change.

Keywords: Investment; Privatization; Property Rights; Public Ownership; Public Utilities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=182 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:182

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... pers/dp.php?dpno=182

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().