The return of public enterprise

Massimo Florio

Working Papers from CSIL Centre for Industrial Studies

Abstract: Public enterprises never disappeared in spite of several privatization waves in the last three decades. This paper offers some trends and possible rationales for their resilience. In a sample of the Forbes 2000 top corporations, as reviewed by OECD economists (Kowalski et al. 2013), we show that the around ten per cent of state-owned enterprises perform better in financial terms than their private counterparts. The Great Recession has also shown that governments had to take over failing major private enterprises, including particularly banks. In several countries, particularly in Western Europe, there is municipalization of electricity and water distribution. In the EU/15, there is also evidence that in electricity and gas, government owned incumbents offer fairer prices to households than private competitors. Recent research on mergers and acquisitions confirms that in the last ten years there has been an increase of publicization relative to privatization, including through trans-border deals.

Keywords: Public enterprise; privatization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H44 L32 L33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2014-02-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-ind
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mst:wpaper:201401

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