Infrastructure State-Owned Enterprises: A Tale of Inefficiency and Fiscal Dependence

Matias Herrera Dappe, Aldo Musacchio, Carolina Pan, Yadviga Viktorivna Semikolenova, Burak Turkgulu and Jonathan Barboza Pineda

No 9969, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper examines the performance of infrastructure companies owned by the state, using the newly created World Bank Database of Infrastructure State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). The data cover 19 countries and 135 SOEs between 2000 and 2018. The analysis reveals that infrastructure SOEs are large and have weak financial performance that generates significant fiscal risk. The paper introduces new measures of financial performance net of fiscal transfers and examines previously uncovered patterns of subsidies by sector. It examines the effect of state ownership by comparing the firms in the database with hundreds of comparable private firms, using coarsened exact matching. The findings show that relative to comparable private firms, infrastructure SOEs are less efficient, represent a larger share of gross domestic product, have larger liabilities as a share of gross domestic product and larger employment costs as a share of revenues, and yield lower returns on assets.

Keywords: Public Sector Administrative & Civil Service Reform; De Facto Governments; Economics and Finance of Public Institution Development; State Owned Enterprise Reform; Public Sector Administrative and Civil Service Reform; Democratic Government; Transport Services; Railways Transport; Financial Sector Policy; Private Sector Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/48813164 ... iscal-Dependence.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:9969

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().