Efficient performance by companies with mixed ownership: Privatization and divestiture of a vertically integrated public monopoly

Sanford Berg, Makoto Okamura, Haruka Yane and Shinji Yane

Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 2022, vol. 93, issue 3, 717-730

Abstract: This paper examines a model of privatization and divestiture of a vertically integrated public monopoly. The framework is used to derive general conditions of how mixed companies might be used to promote efficient outcomes without assuming either an ideal social planner or superior cost performance of private enterprise. The conditions suggest that efficient public policy towards mixed (public‐private partnership) companies depends on basic cost and demand conditions. The results indicate that: (1) a vertically integrated private monopoly can be more efficient than any combination of mixed companies when there is a sufficiently flat linear (elastic) demand curve and relatively greater (upward sloping) marginal cost for the downstream sector; (2) an upstream public and downstream public firm can achieve the first best outcome when the downstream firm has constant marginal costs; and (3) a partial privatization of the upstream firm achieves higher welfare than taking that action for the downstream firm. The intuition behind the propositions is provided using standard features of cost and demand. While the implications for public policy regarding privatization and divestiture in infrastructure sectors are not definitive, the results underscore the importance of understanding cost and demand conditions when developing and implementing public policies.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/apce.12330

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:bla:annpce:v:93:y:2022:i:3:p:717-730

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1370-4788

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics is currently edited by Marco Marini

More articles in Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().