WPS 2L-20
POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER   2420
Public versus Private                                                 Disappointment with insider
trading in Russia, with
Ow nership                                                            voucher privatization in the
Czech Republic, and with the
The  Current State  of the  Debate                                    privatization of infrastructure
in many developing countries
has spawned new critiques of
Mary Shirley                                                          privatization. How do theory
Patrick Walsh                                                         and empirical evidence
answer the much-debated
questions, Which is more
important to performance,
competition or private
ownership? Are state
enterprises more subject to
welfare-reducing
interventions by government
than orivate firms are? Do
state enterprises suffer more
from problems of corporate
governance?
The World Bank
Development Research Group
Regulation and Competition Policy
August 2000



POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 2420
Summary findings
At the heart of the debate about public versus private         in the theoretical literature than in the empirical
ownership lie three questions:                                 literature. In most cases, empirical research strongly
* Does competition matter more than ownership?              favors private ownership in competitive markets over a
* Are state enterprises more subject to welfare-            state-owned counterfactual (although construction of the
reducing interventions by government than private firms        counterfactual is itself a problem). Theory's ambiguity
are?                                                           about ownership in monopoly markets seems better
* Do state enterprises suffer more from governance          justified.
problems than private firms do?                                  Since the choice confronting governments is between
Even if the answers to these questions favor private         state ownership and privatization rather than between
ownership, the question must still be asked: Do                privatization and optimality, theory has left a gap that
distortions in the process of privatization mean that          empirical work has tried to fill. Further research is
privatized firms perform worse than state enterprises?         needed.
Shirley and Walsh's review found greater ambiguity
about the merits of privatization and private ownership
This paper-a product of Regulation and Competition Policy, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in
the group to analyze the effects of privatization and the role of regulation and politics. Copies of the paper are available
free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Zeny Kranzer, room MC3-439,
telephone 202-473-8526, fax 202-522-1155, email address zkranzer@worldbank.org. Policy Research Working Papers
are also posted on the Web at www.worldbank.org/research/workingpapers. Mary Shirley may be contacted at
mshirley@worldbank.org. August 2000. (67 pages)
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about
development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The
papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this
paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the
countries they represent.
Produced by the Policy Research Dissemination Ceniter



Public vs. Private Ownership: The current state of the Debate
Mary Shirley and Patrick Walsh*
Draft: Do Not Cite or Quote
Address: Mary Shirley, MC 3-437, DECRG, The World Bank
1818 H Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20433
Email: mshirley(&,worldbank.org Phone: 202-473-7483
* Research Manager and consultant of the Development Research Group of the World Bank. We are grateful for the
constructive comments of Robert Cull, Philip Keefer, Ross Levine, Ken Sokoloff and L. Colin Xu.






3
1.   Introduction
The debate over state ownership continues to rage. Despite proclamations of a new paradigm following
the rise of Margaret Thatcher and later the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, arguments over public versus private ownership persist. Disappointment with the results of
insider privatization in Russia, voucher privatization in the Czech Republic and infrastructure
privatization in many developing countries has spawned new critiques of privatization. Concerns about
globalization have also fostered a backlash against privatization in some quarters. A growing empirical
literature has begun to provide unambiguous tests of the theoretical arguments, yet much theory is
uninformed by the empirical results. The objective of this article is to review the ownership literature,
organize the main themes of the argument, and update the reader on the current evidence.
State ownership experienced a period of popularity among developed nations in the 1930's, 1940's and
1950's, and in developing nations throughout the postwar period. In industrialized nations, state
ownership was viewed as the remedy for market failures such as externalities and monopoly, which at
that time were considered widespread. In developing nations these justifications were coupled with
arguments that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) facilitated "economic independence" and planned
development. Theoretical attacks on state ownership date back to the work of Hayek and Friedman, but
these theories did not gain momentum until the 1960's and 70's. At that time, an empirical literature
emerged to test the theoretical prediction made by Alchian (1965) that SOEs will be inherently less
efficient than private firms. Studies directly applying insights from theories of corporate governance and
government behavior to questions of SOEs and privatization began to appear in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Meanwhile, governments in both industrialized and developing nations expressed concern about the SOE
record of failure and waste. These concerns brought an increasing urgency to the debate on the merits of



4
state ownership. Are the failures of SOEs exaggerated: do they in fact perform worse than private firms?
If the failures exist, and reform is necessary, how should it be accomplished? Can SOEs be reformed
from within, or are they intrinsically inefficient? Would changes in the operating environment improve
SOE performance, or is a wholesale change of ownership necessary? Are SOE inefficiencies a by-
product of government-imposed social objectives, and do the benefits from these social goals outweigh
the cost of inefficiency? Are there inevitable flaws in the process of privatization that will produce
performance inferior to continued state ownership? Are the circumstances in some countries so inimical
to successful privatization that state ownership will always dominate, at least in monopoly markets.
Three broad approaches to the SOE debate have emerged. First, one set of theories argues that product-
market competition, not property rights, is the primary determinant of enterprise performance. A second
set of theories focuses instead on ownership and hypothesizes that states use SOEs for purposes other
than to maximize social welfare, in ways they could not if the firms were private, and that this will have
an adverse effect on performance in any market structure. A third approach argues that, regardless of
government's goals, private firms will be more successful than SOEs in addressing problems of corporate
governance. Our survey examines each of these approaches in turn, and considers how they interact
(sections 2-4). We then review the argument that, because of flaws in the process, privatized firms will
perform worse than private firms and worse than SOEs (section 5). We give a sense of the empirical
findings in each section and also provide an overview of the results of empirical work comparing public
and private performance (section 6). Section 7 summaries the implications of our findings.
2.   The Role of Competition
The extent to which competition influences performance has important implications for reform. If the
introduction of competition is sufficient to equalize public and private performance, then there is little
need to consider the nature of ownership. However, if competition is not the only factor influencing SOE



5
operations, then the focus must be not solely on the market but also on the differences between public and
private ownership. Thus, we address the question of competition before examining issues such as
government behavior or corporate governance.
Market Structure and Operational Efficiency
Competition in product markets is widely viewed to improve allocative efficiency. In the presence of
competing producers, prices will tend towards marginal cost, thus allocating resources to their highest
value. Conversely, when competition is absent, prices are raised and production is lowered relative to the
competitive equilibrium. There is theoretical evidence that this effect can be extended to public firms -- a
small group of studies (Beato and Mas-Colell 1984; De Fraja and Delbono 1986; Cremer et al 1987)
examines the allocative results of public-private competition in a Stackelberg duopoly framework. These
studies suggest that the competitive (price at marginal cost) result will obtain if the public firm is the
Stackelberg follower. Moreover, there is empirical evidence that in absence of competition, SOEs will
produce allocatively inefficient results (Peltzman 1971; Jones 1985). Although allocative efficiency is
clearly important, SOE behavior in this regard follows the well-understood patterns of private firms in
various market structures (barring government-imposed rules on SOE pricing and output, which will be
discussed later). The following discussion will focus on operational efficiency, defined as the
maximization of the present value of outputs from a given set of inputs. It is argued that vigorous
competition can enhance such efficiency, primarily through reducing managerial slack (X-inefficiency).
We will first examine this operational-efficiency effect in general, and then determine whether it can be
applied to SOEs.
The theory of competition's impact on operational efficiency originated with Hayek (1945) and
Leibenstein (1966), and falls into two related categories: incentive effects and information effects.
Competition in product markets creates incentive effects by threatening the managers of inefficient firms
with diminished market share. This process is explored by Machlup (1967), who argues that since



6
managerial slack can only persist in the presence of supernormal profits, it can only exist in imperfectly
competitive situations. Incentive effects are further developed by Winter (1971), who models
competition as a natural selection process that prods initially inefficient firms to become efficient or
disappear. Building on these insights, theories of information effects argue that competition provides
information about costs and manager effort to owners, who would otherwise be in the dark. With this
information, owners can design better incentive systems and evaluate manager efforts more accurately
(Holmstrom 1982; Lin, Cai, and Li 1998; Yarrow 1986). Hart (1983) presents a much-cited model in
which there is a common component of costs among firms, and managers whose costs are lower than the
owners estimate can shirk and still meet their goals. However, if competition drives down prices and
costs in an industry, owners will know that poor firm performance derives not from costs (which are
common) but from managerial slack. A similar model is presented by Willig (1985), who shows that
competition can reveal information about managerial effort by increasing the sensitivity of profits to
costs. In both cases, it is assumed that armed with better information, owners can devise incentive
structures that align managers' interests more closely with their own. (The difficulties surrounding the
manager-owner relationship inform our discussion of public/private ownership, and will be explored fully
in Part 4.)
While a strong case can be made that competition enhances internal efficiency, when considering SOEs it
must still be determined whether SOEs will perform as well as private firms facing the same market
structure, i.e. whether the effects of competition are stronger or weaker than the effects of ownership. In
their landmark study, Vickers and Yarrow (1989) -- henceforth VY-- cite competition's infornation effect
as an important influence on public-sector performance, but do not quantify the effect relative to
ownership. Two types of arguments that emphasize ownership over competition have been made: one
holds that political interference in SOEs overwhelms competition effects, while the other maintains that
inherent difficulties in SOE management negate the impact of competition. These two arguments



7
surrounding political behavior and SOE management are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and will
both be addressed in detail later in this paper.
Shleifer and Visnhy (1994) and Boycko, Shleifer, and Vishny (1996) address the competition/ownership
question by calling into question the motivation of politicians. They argue that, even in fully competitive
environments, SOEs will be inefficient because politicians force them to pursue political goals such as
over-employment. Because such distortionary interventions are more costly and transparent in private
firms, they maintain that ownership differences are the key source of efficiency differences. Nellis (1994)
supports the view that politicians will distort SOE functions to meet political goals, and suggests that the
conditions for efficient SOE operations (competitive markets and autonomous, profit-maximizing
managers) are precisely the conditions that politicians wish to avoid. Stigliz (1993) raises similar
questions, arguing that because of their desire to use SOEs for political purposes, politicians cannot
credibly commit to encouraging competition. These arguments are backed up by research documenting
political use and abuse of SOEs (Donahue 1989; Kikeri, Nellis, and Shirley 1992; and World Bank 1995).
In this framework, then, competition would only be effective when governments are able to renounce
using SOEs to meet political objectives, implicit or explicit. Sappington and Sidak (1999) extend this
analysis. In their view, because SOEs rarely seek to maximize profits, they actually have greater
incentives and ability to engage in anti-competitive behavior. In particular, these authors show that SOEs
are more likely than private firms to set price below marginal cost, raising their competitors' costs
through market or political methods, and seek regulatory barriers to entry. This analysis takes the
dominance of ownership over market structure a step further: instead of a competitive market improving
SOE performance, an SOE may in fact hamper market performance. Once again, this claim is supported
by empirical evidence (Jones 1985; Kikeri, Nellis, and Shirley 1992; and World Bank 1995).
Boardman and Vining (1992) look more explicitly at competition and ownership by examining corporate
governance problems. They consider claims (Borcherding et al 19S2; Whitehead 1988) that in the case



8
where markets are fully competitive, ownership does not have an impact on efficiency. These claims
assume, they argue, that owners monitor managers with equal effectiveness in the public and private
sectors. Boardman and Vining challenge this assumption on several levels, maintaining that average
private sector monitoring must be superior due to the presence of: owner-operated private firms; threats of
takeover; failures in the political market; government monitors with self-serving interests; and a market
for public managers that is highly distorted relative to the private market. They support this assertion
with empirical work that demonstrates superior private performance in competitive markets. Nellis
(1994) highlights similar advantages for private monitoring, including a more healthy market for
managers and profit-oriented monitors.
The incentive and information effects of competition operate by strengthening the owner's ability to
monitor the manager. But if the owner cannot (as Boardman and Vining argue) or will not (as Shleifer &
Vishny and others maintain) create incentives to accompany that monitoring, then these effects of
competition will not raise internal efficiency. Thus, the degree to which market structure influences
operating efficiency depends on the relative vulnerability of public and private firms to political
interference (discussed in part 3) and the relative success of public and private firms in creating effective
corporate governance (discussed in part 4).
Kay and Thompson (1986) offer a rebuttal to the argument that ownership matters more than competition
for productive efficiency. They argue that if competition is must be combined with a viable threat of exit
such as a hostile takeover or bankruptcy, it will promote productive efficiency. If there is no way to force
a productively inefficient firm out of business, they argue, the managers will have little incentive to raise
efficiency. Pointing to the existence of large private monopolies that are productively inefficient, they
argue that the importance of exit cuts across ownership forms. Furthermore, they cite empirical evidence
that public and private performance is similar - both are good in competitive markets and sluggish in non-
competitive markets. This empirical literature, however, represents early cross-sectional studies that



9
focused largely on utilities and in developed nations, which has since been supplemented by an empirical
literature that finds overwhelming ownership effects (see section 6). Kay and Thompson conclude that
while private ownership has an edge in fully competitive markets, focusing on ownership at the expense
of competition produces sub-optimal results. However, if the threat of exit is as important for
competition to raise productive efficiency as these authors suggest, then an emphasis on introducing
credible threats of bankruptcy and takeover would produce the best results. The difficulties of
introducing a credible exit threat in a public-ownership environment will be discussed in Part 4.
Yarrow (1986) follows an argument similar to Kay and Thompson (1986), acknowledging that while
private firms have a general advantage in the monitoring of managers, it is the competitive and regulatory
environment that shapes the incentives of managers. This conclusion is based on his survey of pre-and
post-privatization firm performance in Britain, which suggested that performance depended more on
market structure than on ownership (other pre- and post-privatization studies such as Megginson et al
1994 show ownership and market structure to act more as complements). Yarrow therefore also
concludes that reforms emphasizing ownership over market structure are misguided. These findings are
echoed in Caves (1990), who sees product-market competition as the source of both allocative and
productive efficiency. Caves notes that private firms are better managed, but stresses that rigorous
competition is necessary to shape the incentives of these managers. While this may be the case, he does
not show that rigorous competition also shapes the incentives of public managers. In the context of
developing nations, Cook and Kirkpatrick (1988) argue that because of massive market failures,
privatization will simply produce private monopolies, and that promotion of competition and continued
state ownership produce the best results. This argument, however, assumes that public ownership is the
best response to market failure, an assumption that will be challenged in the following sections.
The theoretical arguments giving ownership dominance over market structure are strong. In the presence
of political interference and poor governance in the public sector, it is probable that SOEs will perform



10
poorly even in highly competitive markets - or worse, that they will seek to cripple those markets. Since
many objections to this argument are based on empirical observations, a review of the empirical literature
is revealing. Those who place an emphasis on market structure argue that SOEs appear to have lower
performance because most studies only examine SOEs in non-competitive markets. They predict that in
competitive markets, there would be little difference between public and private firms. Those who
believe that ownership has a greater impact theorize that SOE performance would lag private performance
in both competitive and non-competitive industries. Early studies produced contrasting results. 'Caves &
Christiansen (1980) found in a comparison of public and private railroads that in the presence of
competition there is no difference between public and private efficiency. In contrast, Davies (1971)
found a massive private-sector advantage in Australian airlines. More recent studies, using larger
samples, broadly show that while both ownership and competition do affect performance, a public-private
gap exists even in competitive markets. Boardman and Vining (1989, 1992) present data showing that
private firms are more efficient than SOEs, even in competitive industries. Megginson, Nash, and
Randenborgh (1994), looking at firm performance before and after privatization, find that private
ownership increases efficiency in all situations, and that this effect is more pronounced in competitive
markets. Ros (1999) finds that both ownership and market structure have significant effects on
efficiency, but that the ownership effect is slightly more robust across different measures of performance.
Our own survey of empirical results (see section 6) yields 16 studies of fully competitive markets, 11 of
which demonstrate superior private performance and 5 of which indicate no difference. Evidence from
transition economies yields similar mixed results. Looking at privatized firms in Russia, Earle and Estrin
(1998) find that ownership has a much stronger impact on productivity than market structure. In a survey
of studies on transition economies, however, Djankov and Murrell (2000) find that import competition
has major positive effects outside of Russia. Focusing on Chinese SOEs, Li (1997) finds that productivity
gains are associated with market liberalization. However, like Yarrow (1986), this study fails to consider
the proper counterfactual: although the performance of SOEs may have improved in the presence of
competition, the true question is whether this performance matches that of private (or privatized) firms.



11
The empirical literature suggests that while market structure has a positive impact performance, this
impact fails to dominate the ownership effect. The argument that market-structure dominance rests on
cases in which public and private firms in competitive environments perform equally well, and these
cases are rare. Taken together with the theoretical literature, these empirical studies suggest that both
competition and ownership affect firm performance, and there are many ways in which the effects of
ownership can negate the influence of markets.
Natural Monopoly
There are, of course, some cases in which effective competition is neither possible nor desirable. These
cases are usually natural monopolies, where indivisibility of networks or ever-increasing returns to scale
dictate that the most efficient market structure is a single firm (although Noll 1999 makes a strong case
that natural monopolies do not actually exist in their archetypal industry, telecommunications). VY call
this the trade-off between allocative efficiency and scale economies. They present a model showing that
in these cases, the duplication of fixed costs associated with firm entry outweighs the benefits enjoyed by
consumers. This issue is especially relevant for SOE reform efforts, because a major rationale for state
ownership in developed nations has been the existence of natural monopolies that limit competition.
Market failure is even more of an issue in developing nations. Cook and Kirkpatrick (1988) cite extensive
market failures in less-developed countries, and thus are highly critical of privatization efforts in these
countries. Their argument assumes, however, that the best remedy to market failure is state ownership.
In fact, where the market structure is taken as given, the focus of the literature shifts to whether state
ownership or regulation of a private monopoly produces better results. Laffont and Tirole (1993) note,
citing Williamson (1985) and Grossman and Hart (1986), that the results of such a comparison depend on
whether contracts are complete or incomplete. This is an important distinction that we will return to in
the section on government behavior. If contracts are complete, if they define all aspects of performance
and every possible eventuality, then both regulation and public ownership face the same straightforward



12
issues of enforcement. Hence, both methods yield the same results. Public ownership and regulation of
private firms will produce different results only in the presence of incomplete contracts, where some
aspects of performance and eventualities cannot be defined in advance.
In the real world of incomplete contracts, which path produces the best results? The theoretical literature
finds that the answer often depends on the institutional environment. Shapiro and Willig (1990) use a
cost-of-information framework to analyze this question, and make a distinction between government
agents (SOE managers or regulators) who have a great deal of operational autonomy and those who have
little. In the case of more autonomous agents, they find that public ownership and private ownership with
regulation produce the same results when information about profits is revealed only after investment, or
when the government is indifferent the amount of money spent to acquire that information ex ante. When
these conditions do not apply, they find that the case for public ownership grows with the efficiency of
political markets and diminishes with the "salience" of the agent's private agenda (both issues that will be
addressed later). When the government agent has little autonomy, regulation is preferred when
information on market failure is publicly known and information on profitability is revealed only after
investments are made. While these results suggest that regulation is superior or at least equal to public
ownership in some situations, several problems with regulation have been noted. Adam, Cavendish, and
Mistry (1992) also present a model of the public ownership/private regulation choice. The results of this
model depend on regulatory capacity, the importance of private information, and how much public
officials deviate from government objectives. Analysis by Laffont and Tirole (199 la, 1993) suggests that
managers of regulated firms are caught in a crossfire between their two sets of principals, the owners and
the regulators. Howeyer, they still conclude that the relative cost efficiency of regulated private firms and
public ownership is theoretically ambiguous. VY identify four problems of regulation that can lead to
inefficiencies: overcapitalization (Averch-Johnson effect); asymmetric information; the complexities of
regulating multiproduct firms; and regulatory capture. All of these problems could also affect the
management of SOEs, however.



13
One way to address regulatory failure is to foster competition through bidding for the right to operate as a
monopoly, a solution developed by Demsetz (1968). Kay and Thompson (1986) and Bishop and Kay
(1989) support this solution to the natural monopoly problem, seeing it as a way to introduce a form of
competition into non-competitive markets. Theoretically, this solution has the attractive property of
combining the efficiency gains from a single producer with (contracted) incentives to price and produce at
nearly competitive levels (VY). Williamson (1976) and Goldberg (1976) find several problems with this
approach, however. They raise the possibility that the bidding may not be competitive, either because of
collusion, asymmetric information, or incumbent advantages. Further, these authors argue that the
incumbent and the winning bidder create a bi-lateral monopoly when pricing the assets that are to be
turned over. Finally, since contracts are necessarily imperfect, there will be monitoring costs that may
exceed the benefits from auctioning. Bishop and Kay (1989) respond by outlining criteria for contracting
out: if the enterprise in question is similar to activities already carried out by the private sector, and if
compliance with the contract can be easily monitored, then the Williamson/Goldberg difficulties can be
overcome. As will be discussed later, Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997) and Shleifer (1998) show that
contracting out can be particularly effective when consumers have a choice among contracted suppliers,
in effect negating the Williamson/Goldberg problems in the presence of competition.
A second method to reduce regulatory failure advocated in the literature is to use the regulatory
mechanism to promote competition among parallel firms (perhaps with separate geographic monopolies).
The regulated prices for one firm would depend on cost savings in other firms, thus producing a sort of
"race to the top" in terms of internal efficiency (VY). Allocative efficiency would also be enhanced, as
the regulatory process would mimic the results of a competitive industry. This method draws on insights
from the principal-agent literature, which holds that a principal (regulator) can achieve gains by
rewarding each agent (firm) on his efforts relative to all the other agents (Nalebuff and Stiglitz, 1983).
This method requires, however, that all the firms face similar circumstances or that differences can be



14
measured and accounted for, and that they do not collude. These conditions may be difficult to achieve
in practice.
Addressing the choice between regulation and privatization, Shirley, Nellis, and Kikeri (1992) and
Vickers and Yarrow (1991) acknowledge the difficulty of privatizing natural monopolies, but note that
the success of such privatizations depends on the regulatory capacity of the government. Thus, middle-
income countries with more developed regulatory bodies may be better able to privatize and regulate than
lower-income countries with weak regulation, which suggests that in all but the poorest countries,
privatization and regulation is preferred to continued public ownership. However, lower-income
countries may be less able to manage SOEs, and thence benefit more from privatization despite poor
regulation. The empirical literature is less ambiguous than theory, finding that private regulated firms
perform the same as or better than SOEs in most studies (see section 6). But the advantage of private
firms in natural monopolies is not as clear as in competitive markets. Five out of 16 studies find that
monopoly SOEs outperformed private monopolies. Quality of regulation dominates ownership in some
circumstances, for reasons we examine later.
Since ownership per se can affect performance, the next section investigates whether governments are
likely to demand that their SOEs perform efficiently. Section 4 asks whether governments which do
demand efficiency can overcome the inherent problems of separation of ownership and control.
3.   Government Behavior and SOEs
Two different sets of assumptions can be used to analyze the behavior of governments. One expects
political markets to work efficiently, such that rational governments have incentives to maximize social
welfare. The other assumes that political markets are inefficient, and that government actors, such as
bureaucrats or legislators, are able to maximize their own utility - in the form of votes, income, or favors
- in ways that subvert the common good. In this environment, the concern is that government actors may



15
promote distortionary and inefficient SOE practices in order to reap political benefits. In contrast, there is
less latitude for such a government to intervene in the operations of private firms.
Social- Welfare Maximizing Government
When political markets are assumed to work efficiently, bureaucrats and politicians will act as loyal
agents of the citizens. In this scenario, competition among politicians allows voters to support those who
most clearly represent their interests, rejecting those who do not. This forces politicians to align their
policies with the interests of the voters, or be left out of office. Thus, politicians will seek to maximize
social welfare, or more specifically, the sum of consumer and producer surplus (VY). Much of the
rationale for public ownership is based on this framework. When there are significant market failures, a
SOE manager can produce more efficient results than managers in the private sector. In industrialized
nations, the market failures to be corrected were typically monopolies and externalities (Shleifer, 1998).
By abandoning profit maximization in favor of social welfare maximization, an SOE that is a monopoly
(natural or not) can adjust prices and output to approximate the competitive equilibrium (VY; Shleifer and
Vishny 1994). Likewise, if industries with major externalities are dominated by SOEs, public managers
can adjust prices to reflect the true social cost of the product. As mentioned before, these solutions
usually require the SOE to be the sole producer in the industry, thus abandoning any hope of competition.
In developing nations, the assumption of a social-welfare maximizing govemment has also been adopted,
although for different reasons. Developing nations tumed to public ownership to accumulate productive
assets that were domestically-owned and to promote a broader socialist program, as well as for the
reasons of extemality and natural monopoly cited in industrialized nations.
Other SOE goals intend to promote social welfare in ways beyond addressing market failure. Some
scholars (Turvey 1968; Wintrobe 1985) argue that the benefits of these social goals outweigh the resulting
loss of efficiency. Choksi (1979) provides a long list of social benefits that SOEs have been intended to



16
provide, including facilitation of industrialization through central planning, acceleration of technology
transfer, increased employment, reduced inequality, regional development, and increased national security
or "autonomy". Focusing mainly on developed nations, some see a role for SOEs in addressing market
failures such as natural monopolies (Millward 1983), and in providing an additional avenue for
macroeconomic policy via price controls (Millward 1976). Willner (1996), also considering developed
nations, argues that public ownership reduces income inequality and increases product quality, at an
acceptable loss of economic efficiency. In the context of developing nations, some argue that SOEs
contribute to capital fornation, technology transfer, and income redistribution (Sacristan 1980; Labra
1980), although these arguments are often made within a Marxist framework and thus suffer from the
associated theoretical problems of that ideology.
Despite their conclusions that social benefits can outweigh economic costs, none of these articles present
a framework in which these costs and benefits can be quantified. Therefore, comparisons and judgements
about the costs and benefits of social goals are inherently arbitrary. Jones (1991) confronts this issue
more directly than other studies, but still falls short of a usable method of quantifying costs and benefits.
With the exception of a few case studies, the empirical literature has not seriously tested the argument that
social benefits of SOEs outweigh the economic costs. Galal et al (1994) find that after privatization,
consumer and labor welfare went up in 11 out of 12 cases in developing and industrialized countries,
despite layoffs and price increases. They found that the losses of laid-off workers were compensated by
severance pay and outweighed by the gains from stock shares to those who kept their jobs. The loss to
consumers from higher prices was considerably smaller than the benefits of expanded and better service.
Moreover, with the exception of Millward (1983), the articles supporting the social benefits of SOEs fail
to consider other ways of achieving social goals besides public ownership. The large literature on the
regulation of private natural monopolies is largely ignored, as are alternative methods of addressing
income inequality, provision of public goods, and macroeconomic stabilization.



17
Recent studies on the rationale for public ownership have focused on the ability and desirability of
government intervention, assuming welfare-maximizing government. Sappington and Stiglitz (1987)
argue that public ownership reduces the cost of government involvement in markets, and that this
involvement is beneficial when market failures must be corrected. They develop these benefits of
government involvement by introducing their Fundamental Privatization Theorem. This theorem
identifies the conditions that are necessary to make a transfer from public production to private
production efficiency-enhancing - i.e. when the market does at least as well as a benevolent goernment.
When these conditions hold, private producers have the advantage. When these conditions fail, which the
authors claim happens almost constantly, the benevolent government assumption should be relaxed and
market and government failures should be carefully compared. Shapiro and Willig (1990) find a similar
difference in the cost of intervention, and show that this difference is due to the different structures of
information in public and private sectors. Furthermore, they find that such intervention is desirable when
the following conditions hold: there are significant market failures; managers have private information
about costs and profitability; and managers' private agendas are kept in check by an efficient political
market.
Controversy surrounds the idea that public ownership is the best solution to market failure, even with a
welfare-maximizing government. There are two main challenges to this view of public ownership: first
that market failure can be addressed through more efficient means, and second that even benevolent
governments have incentives to skew the distribution of the maximized social welfare.
Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997) and Shleifer (1998) present a useful framework for analyzing
ownership decisions in the presence of welfare-maximizing government. This framework stands in stark
contrast to that put forward by Sappington and Stiglitz or Shapiro and Willig, and it is both more intuitive
and more consistent with established theories of contracting. In a benevolent-government environment,
Hart et al and Shleifer argue that the decision to produce in the public or private sector is analogous to a



18
firm's decision to buy an input on the market or produce it in-house, an issue first explored by Coase
(1937). If a government desires a certain good or service to be provided, it can produce the good or
service itself by contracting with employees and managers, or it can contract with a private firm to
provide the product. As with regulation, in the presence of complete contracts the problem becomes one
of enforcement. There is no performance difference between production done in-house and by a
contracted firm. However, in the real world of imperfect contracts, Grossman and Hart (1986), Hart and
Moore (1990), and Hart (1995), show that tradeoffs emerge between public and private production.
Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997) argue that the most important of these tradeoffs is between efficiency
and quality. They present a model where quality and cost are correlated. Even benevolent public
managers have weak motivation to invest in either cost reduction or quality improvement because they
would receive little or none of the benefit. Private contractors, on the other hand, can pocket the fruits of
cost savings. They thus have strong incentives to reduce costs but will only preserve quality where it is
contracted for. Thus, excessive cost-cutting in the private sector can lead to decreases in non-contractible
quality (privatized prisons are given as an example). However, Hart, Shleifer and Vishny (1997) and
Shleifer (1998) note that even when non-contractible quality is an important part of output, private
contractors may still have an edge because of forces that compel them to maintain quality. These forces
include consumer choice among suppliers (competition), and the effect of reputation on future sales.
Overall, Shleifer (1998) concludes that even in an environment where government seeks to maximize
social welfare and contracts are incomplete, public ownership is preferred to private contracting only
when both of the following are true: non-contractible quality and innovation are important and cost
cutting will lower this quality, and consumer choice and reputation are ineffective. Historical evidence
from the United States presents mixed evidence on this theory. Troesken (2000) finds that public water
utilities around the turn of the century provided more connections to minority neighborhoods than did
private water utilities, resulting in lower minority typhoid rates in cities served by public firms. This
supports the argument that contracting is not effective when competition is limited and quality is



19
important. However, Troesken (1999) reports that private water utilities around the turn of the century
invested in just as much water purification as public waterworks did, resulting in fairly equal disease rates
between the two systems. This finding suggests that private ownership may be viable even in the worst-
case scenario presented by Shleifer (1998), although a crucial question is whether investments in
purification can be considered "contractible" or not.
As was noted earlier, Williamson (1976) and Goldberg (1976) outline several pitfalls for contracting
schemes, including a breakdown in competition to information asymmetries, collusion, or incumbent
advantages, and the risk that the complexities of transferring assets leads to inefficient ex-ante investment.
However, the implications of these criticisms are strongest when there is also no product-market
competition, as in the case of natural monopoly. When consumers have a choice among contractors,
Shleifer and Vishny (1997) and Shleifer (1998) argue that the socially optimal result will obtain.
Empirical analysis, looking at public services such as garbage collection, shows that while public
ownership or an auctioned monopoly produce sub-optimal results, private contractors in competition for
customers yield high efficiency (Savas 1977; Edwards and Stevens 1978). This evidence suggests that
the Williamson/Goldberg objections are true for auctioned monopolies, and that the Hart/Shleifer/Vishny
framework (rather than the Sappington/Stiglitz framework) accurately describes more competitive
situations.
VY raise the second challenge to SOE performance in the environment of what they call "publicly
interested" government: that governments will skew the distribution of welfare. They examine the
assumption that bureaucrats and politicians in this environment seek to maximize the sum of consumer
and producer surplus. While this sum may in fact be maximized, VY argue that government has
incentives to place non-optimal relative weights on these two surpluses. Governments may place more
emphasis on consumer surplus than on producer surplus, because consumers have more voting power
than producers, or because transfers to low-income consumers are deemed politically desirable. In a



20
similar vein, Schmidt (1996) raises a related point by showing that a benevolent government may over-
subsidize SOEs relative to private enterprises. If the government always chooses a level of production
that matches social cost and social benefit, the SOE manager will have no incentive to reduce costs, and
will therefore require greater subsidies. Privatization, Schmidt argues, is a way for the government to
credibly deny itself private information about production costs, and therefore force the new private
manager to reduce costs, since subsidies now reflect social benefits rather than firm costs. This argument
that SOEs receive larger subsidies than private firms is backed up by empirical observations (Kornai
1980; Shirley and Nellis 1991; World Bank 1995; Claessens and Peters 1997; Djankov 1999).
Thus, even in the theoretical case where governments maximize social welfare, public ownership may not
always be the best solution to market failure. In this situation, the choice between public and private
production depends on the ease with which contracts are monitored and enforced; the degree of potential
competition among private suppliers; the importance of non-contractible quality and innovation; and the
propensity of even enlightened governments to favor consumers (voters) over producers. Many more
questions about the merits of public ownership emerge when we relax the unrealistic assumption that
governments always act in the public interest. This case is explored in the next section.
Self-Interested Government
As discussed above, many of the arguments for the supremacy of public ownership rest on the assumption
that politicians seek to maximize social welfare, which in turn depends on efficient political markets.
Theories of self-interested government undermine this framework by identifying serious imperfections in
political markets. Most obviously, governments in non-democratic systems face little competition aside
from the occasional threat of a coup by another would-be dictator. Moreover, it is argued that major
shortcomings exist in political markets even in democracies. Boardman and Vining (1992) draw on
Mitchell (1989) and Buchanan (1969) to argue that while political markets tend towards the maximum
efficiency possible within a given set of institutions, there is great variation in political efficiency between



21
those sets of institutions. A political market can thus operate well below the efficiency attainable with
ideal institutions. As will be explored below, a self-interested government operating in inefficient
political markets has more scope for intervention in public firms than in private firms.
VY provide more specific arguments against efficient political markets by examining the principal-agent
problem between voters and politicians. First, they note that this relationship is characterized by major
information asymmetries, when efficiency demands that voters be well informed about the actiohs taken
by politicians and the consequences of those actions. Second, they argue that elections are poor
mechanisms for producing information on voter's preferences, as they are held infrequently and are not
constrained to deal with any specific issue. Third, if the benefits of a welfare-enhancing policy are widely
dispersed and the losses concentrated, all those who benefit have the incentive to free ride on any effort to
support the policy, while the potential losers have incentives to defeat it. This is an example of the classic
collective-action problem (Olson, 1965) as applied to voting. These arguments suggest that the principals
(voters) will have great difficulty aligning the interests of the agents (politicians) with their own. The
similar difficulties found between politicians and bureaucrats or firm managers will be discussed in the
section on corporate governance.
The most common alternative to the public-interest framework assumes that politicians and bureaucrats
behave like rational actors who maximize their own utility, in a world where voters have limited
information and influence on their decisions (VY; Vickers and Yarrow 1991). Analysis in this framework
is often called public choice. Applying this framework to the discussion of market failure, Shepsle and
Weingast (1984) argue that due to imperfect political markets, government intervention is not always the
best response to market failure. They maintain that a careful comparison of the relative institutions
(market and government) is necessary to find the least-bad solution.



22
In a world of limited information, politicians may use SOEs to produce political benefits for themselves,
at the cost of inefficient and distortionary SOE operations. Shapiro and Willig (1990) explore the impact
of imperfect political markets on the desirability of public ownership. They model a public manager's
utility as a mixed function of social welfare and private welfare, where private welfare reflects either
personal benefits or the gap between short-run political pressures and long-run public good. They argue
that the relative weights placed on these two kinds of welfare depends on the efficiency of the political
market - the less efficient the market, the more weight managers place on private welfare. This'
corresponds with case studies and observations of SOE operations (Jones 1985; Kikeri, Nellis, and
Shirley 1992; and World Bank 1995). Boycko, Shleifer, and Vishny (1996) find that political
intervention in public enterprises is likely, since politicians who manipulate SOE operations for political
reasons receive all of the benefits of such interventions, but bear little of the direct (subsidies) or indirect
(inefficiencies) costs. Boycko et al also argue that it is more transparent and difficult for politicians to
overtly subsidize private firms than to slant SOE operations so as to serve their political goals. This
argument is backed up by Sappington and Stiglitz (1987) and Shapiro and Willig (1990), who also hold
that state ownership reduces the cost of state intervention. By defining intervention as the promotion of
excess employment, Boycko et al find such interventions to be distortionary and inefficient. Jones (1985)
also focuses on the use of SOEs by politicians to transfer wealth and favors from one group to another.
He finds that these transfers generally run from low-income groups to well-connected groups in the
middle or upper class, and argues. that this is usually the result of politicians' deliberate efforts to reward
their supporters. Like Boycko et al, Jones finds that political transfers through SOEs are far less
transparent, and therefore far more attractive, than traditional taxes and subsidies. Stiglitz (1993) notes
the impact these tendencies have on SOEs - by agreeing to serve politician's interests, SOEs receive
subsidies and are protected from competition.
The literature yields two possible frameworks in which political pressures affect SOE operations. The
first assumes that there is a hierarchy of control from voters to politicians to firms, and that this hierarchy



23
faces principal/agent problems at multiple levels. A second theory abandons the idea of such a hierarchy,
treating politicians, firm managers, and related interest groups as essentially equal actors who bargain and
swap favors.
Most arguments based on principal-agent problems within a hierarchy draw heavily from Alchian (1965).
Alchian argues that the key difference between public and private firms is the incentive and ability of
owners to monitor managers. In the case of private firms, ownership is concentrated relative to ihe public
sector, and ownership shares may be sold. As a result, private owners have the incentive to monitor the
performance of their managers, and to align the managers' interests with their own. In the case of public
firms, ownership is highly diffused (indeed all citizens are owners), and shares of ownership have no
value and may not be sold. Thus, owners of public firms not only have little incentive to monitor their
managers, but even if there were such an incentive they would free-ride on any monitoring efforts. As a
result of this disparity in monitoring, Alchian argues, public firms will have lower internal efficiency than
private firms. Alchian's theory thus describes the principal-agent problem between voters and politicians
(the other problem, between politicians and firm managers, will be discussed in section 4). Alchian's
argument spurred a furious empirical debate on the relative efficiency of public and private ownership,
the results of which are summarized at the end of this paper.
VY also address the principal/agent problem between voters and politicians, as we have seen above.
Taking a more specific approach than Alchian, they begin by defining the goal of politicians as election to
office or advancement to higher office. Politicians in a party have a common interest in electoral victory,
and will promote or demote more junior members based on their contribution to that victory. Where
monitors of public enterprises are subject to promotion or demotion on the basis of their efforts on behalf
of the party, they will use all means at their disposal, including SOEs, to further the electoral success of
the party. VY note that if political markets are efficient, this motivation does not necessarily imply
inefficient use of the SOE. Informed voters will reward a party that increases their welfare by running



24
SOEs efficiently. However, principal/agent problems between voters and politicians prevent the political
market from performing efficiently. As described previously, voters and politicians have asymmetric
information, elections do not provide information on specific issues, and the diffuse benefits of efficient
government fosters free-riding among voters. VY show that in the case of SOEs, these problems can be
manifested in the following way. Realizing that in an election with many issues, a vote will not
necessarily signal a desire for more efficient SOEs, and that even if it did, free-riding on the efforts of
other voters is likely, the average voter will not invest in acquiring information about the performance of
an SOE or the actions of its monitor. While it is possible that in imperfect markets, the maximization of
electoral prospects leads to harmful interference in private firms as well, we have seen that such
interventions are more transparent and more difficult (Jones 1985; Sappington and Stiglitz 1987; Shapiro
and Willig 1990; Boycko, Shleifer, Vishny 1996).
An alternative to the principal/agent approach to self-interested governments abandons the idea of a chain
of command in favor of a network of managers and politicians who strike bargains to maximize their own
benefits. This theory describes three manifestations of bargaining behavior - the petitioning of politicians
by SOE managers, equal bargaining between the two, and the "capture" of the political element by
managers. These manifestations of public choice behavior vary by the relative power of these two
groups.
In the first case, politicians and bureaucrats are assumed to act in their own interests, and are assumed to
place highest value on income, power, and prestige. All three can be enhanced in the public sector by
increases in managers' budgets (costs), whereas in the private sector, increased profits are the source of
such rewards. SOE managers are modeled as constantly petitioning for ever-growing budgets and
transfers, and caring about efficiency only to the extent to which there is competition among bureaus for
the provision of government services. These insights are based largely on Niskanen's theories of
bureaucracy (1971 and 1975). They are supported by empirical work (De Alessi 1969 and 1974; Wagner



25
and Weber 1975; Orzechowski 1977; Deacon 1979) that identifies artificially high budgets and staffing
levels among government bureaus. Alternative formulations of a manager's utility function include
security of tenure (DeAlessi 1974), and the opportunity to shirk (Berle and Means 1932; Jensen and
Meckling 1976; Fama and Jensen 1983). Although private managers may share these objectives, it is
more difficult and more transparent for them to meet these objectives through political action than it is for
SOE managers. And while politicians' and bureaucrats' demands might be met by SOEs improving their
profitability, it requires less managerial effort to petition for transfers.
The second form of public choice behavior grows naturally out of the insights of the first. If SOEs are
always asking - competing, most likely - for higher budgets, while politicians can allocate funds to a
variety of purposes besides transfers to SOEs, then managers must have something to offer the politicians
in retum. Shleifer and Vishny (1994) examine such a situation, comparing the results of different
assumptions about the prevalence of bribes. Their basic model holds that SOE managers create
employment that is politically desirable and economically inefficient, while politicians grant managers
budget increases in retum. Monetary bribes, if allowed, alleviate any mismatch in this process and may
pass in either direction. In the case where bribes are allowed, they find that differences in ownership do
not translate into differences in the amount of superfluous employment, as budgets and bribes will be
modified to produce the same result. In some cases, SOE managers can "buy" additional independence
by bribing politicians, which can lead to more efficient staffing levels. In this framework, they find that
corporatization generally produces more efficient results than continued state ownership, regardless of the
bribe regime. Boycko, Shleifer, Vishny (1996) extends this analysis, arguing that such deals are more
likely under public ownership than private ownership. Therefore, they recommend privatization as the
best solution to SOE inefficiencies, as it makes political intervention more difficult.
The third manifestation of self-interested behavior occurs where SOE interest groups have more clout
than suggested by the passive budget-maximizer or equal bargainer models presented above. In this case



26
SOE interests "capture" the government body charged with monitoring (Borcherding, Bush, and Spann
1977; Borcherding et al 1982). Focusing on organized groups of public employees rather than SOE
managers, they argue that SOE employees trade votes for regulations that both increase the demand for
their work and limit the number of those who can compete with them. This relationship is different from
the private-sector capture scenario (Stigler 1971; Peltzman 1976; Laffont and Tirole 1991b) in which
interest groups exert pressure not through votes but with bribes, campaign contributions, and ex-ante
employment opportunities to regulators. Previous sections have emphasized how electoral prospects
focus the attention of politicians, but the institution of a secret ballot makes enforcement of such contracts
difficult (Borcherding et al 1982). Pommerehne and Frey (1978) and Courant, Gramlich and Rubinfeld
(1980) demonstrate empirical support for this criticism. Given this inability to enforce contracts that are
based on votes, SOEs might rely on more verifiable methods (bribes, political donations, etc.). Or,
instead of SOE interests capturing their monitoring body with their voting power, perhaps a more realistic
scenario is for the monitoring body to award favors to the SOE ex-ante, thus giving the SOE interests an
incentive to keep the incumbent party in office (Shleifer and Vishny 1994).
There is empirical evidence that SOE managers and politicians do in fact interact in ways that benefit
themselves at the expense of general welfare. Shleifer and Vishny (1994) catalogue numerous cases of
SOE inefficiency that result from political meddlings. These inefficiencies usually take the form of
excess employment, above-market wages, investment in projects that benefit politicians rather than
consumers, and allocative distortions resulting from skewed pricing schemes. Frydman, Gray, et al
(1998), focusing on state ownership in transition economies, find that "politicization" prevents SOEs
from restructuring. In particular, they show that political pressures prevent layoffs. Similar processes
are described in Jones (1985), Donahue (1989), Kikeri, Nellis, and Shirley (1992) and World Bank
(1995).



27
Drawing on this literature, with its emphasis on the deals made between politicians and SOE managers, it
is possible to define the conditions under which politicians will use SOE operations to meet political
goals. First, the degree of such behavior depends on the degree of imperfection in the political markets.
The more heavily distorted the political market, the farther a politician can deviate from social welfare
maximization (Shapiro and Willig 1990; Jones 1985; VY). A related condition may be the independence
of the press - politicians may be more able to distort SOE operations the less the press is likely or able to
detect and publicize such distortions. A second influence on political intervention in SOEs is the ease
with which budgets and regulations can be arbitrarily manipulated. An institutional framework in which
a politician can easily increase an SOEs subsidy or hobble its competition will allow more such activity
than a framework where these decisions are subject to scrutiny and can be blocked by other political
players. A third factor influencing the degree of political intervention is the nature of the institutional
relationship between the government and the enterprise. If an enterprise is run as a department of a
ministry, with its managers directly appointed by a minister or chief executive, then political interventions
will be easy and common. Alternatively, if the government acts as the dominant shareholder of a largely
independent firm, acting through a board of directors, political intervention may be possible but is more
costly and more transparent (Galal 1991; Shirley, Nellis 1991). A fourth determinate of political
intervention is the prevalence of corruption. Since bribes can facilitate the deal-making process between
politician and SOE manager, political interventions will be easier in an environment where such activities
are commonplace and unpunished (although Shleifer and Vishny 1994 suggest that bribes can sometimes
actually reduce SOE inefficiencies). Finally, as is made clear by historical evidence on the timing of
reforms, the degree of political intervention depends on the opportunity cost of SOE inefficiency (World
Bank 1995). A country that is, for example, enriched by a high-value export may find the costs of
inefficiency to be acceptable. If the market for that export deteriorates and the economy suffers, however,
politicians may find that previously sustainable inefficiencies are now unaffordable. In such a situation,
SOE reforms and even privatizations are often undertaken.



28
Judging from the literature on government behavior, even assuming governments act to maximize social
welfare, SOEs are the superior solution to market failures only in a relatively rare set of circumstances.
Moreover, another body of analysis strongly suggests that government actors do not behave in this way -
rather, they behave as rational players who maximize their own welfare. SOEs will thus be used to serve
the purposes of politicians in most political markets, at the expense of efficiency. Intervention in private
firms will also occur, but will be less effective because of higher costs and greater transparency. If we
ignore this body of thought and assume that government actors put their interests aside and demand
efficient results from their SOEs, another issue remains. Are governments as capable as private owners of
inducing SOEs to produce efficient results, given the problems inherent in the separation of ownership
and control?
4.   Corporate Governance
Public and private firms face a similar problem. In both cases, owners seldom manage the day-to-day
operations of the firm. As a result, they face a principal/agent problem with those whom they hire to do
the managing. Resolving this principal/agent dilemma is crucial to efficient firm operation. Although
both public and private firms face this problem, their responses and therefore their performance can differ
significantly. This section examines the problems of separation of ownership and control and some of the
ways to address these problems, and then considers the different ways that SOEs and private firms
respond to these problems and solutions.
Separation of Ownership and Control
Most large, modern firms separate the functions of ownership and control, granting the rights to the firm's
profits to the owners, who hire managers. This arrangement has the desirable property of allowing
specialization in management and ownership (Fama and Jensen 1983; Dyck 1999). Managers can be
selected for their comparative advantage in firm operation, and are subjected to a market for their
services. However, the separation of ownership and control also has the undesirable property that



29
decision-makers bear few of the consequences of their decisions. Since managers' personal objectives
are different from those of owners, a conflict emerges between the two groups. Managers have every
incentive to use their control to serve their own purposes at the expense of profitability and owner
welfare, or even to expropriate investments funds altogether (Berle and Means, 1932; Jensen and
Meckling 1976; Fama and Jensen 1983; VY; Stiglitz 1993; Shleifer and Vishny 1995; Lin, Cai, and Li
1998; Kane 1999; Dyck 1999; Shleifer, Vishny, La Porta, and Lopez-de-Silanes 1999a). Despite these
agency problems, there is evidence that separation of ownership and control yields net benefits. Jensen
and Meckling (1976) conclude that the benefits of specialization outweigh agency costs (monitoring and
contracting). Fama and Jensen (1983) identify the circumstances in which varying degrees of separation
are appropriate. The extent to which this principal-agent problem is resolved has a major impact on the
development of capital markets, dividend practices, and availability of external finance (Shleifer, Vishny,
La Porta, and Lopez-de-Silanes 1999a) as well as on firm valuation (Shleifer, Vishny, La Porta, and
Lopez-de-Silanes 1999b).
Problems of separation of ownership and control arise in both private firms and SOEs. Some argue that
this fact alone eliminates the differences between public and private ownership. For example, Chang and
Singh (1997) maintain that SOEs and large private firms must both contend with unwieldy bureaucracies,
and that both of the respective disciplinary mechanisms - political and economic markets - are imperfect.
They conclude that private firms therefore have no inherent advantage in corporate governance. Vernon-
Wortzel and Wortzel (1989) make a similar argument, maintaining that the performance of any
organization, public or private, depends on management culture and the clarity of goals and objectives.
When the objectives are vague and contradictory, and the management culture does not value efficiency,
then performance will decay. They claim this explains the patchwork of success and failure among both
private and public firms. However, these analyses entirely ignore the mainstream theoretical framework
of corporate governance that is detailed below. Moreover, they present no theoretical model or empirical
evidence to show that public and private management problems are the same. In particular, Vernon-



30
Wortzel and Wortzel fail to identify why sub-optimal "cultures" develop and persist in some settings but
are replaced by optimal cultures in others -- essentially, they neglect the corporate governance
implications of public ownership.
A more widely accepted view is that there are important differences between public and private
governance, and that these differences impact performance. Differences between public and private
corporate governance can be examined in the context of the four major methods of governance:
monitoring by owners, formal legal restraints, takeovers, and bankruptcy.
Monitoring
Monitoring by owners represents the first solution to the separation of ownership and control, and may
lead owners to write a contract with managers that makes income or continued employment dependent
upon firm performance. Such ex-ante systems are in fact widely used, although their efficacy has been
debated in both empirical and theoretical studies (see Shleifer and Vishny 1995 for an excellent overview
of this literature). One problem with monitoring by owners is that information asymmetries may allow
managers significant leeway in negotiating contracts (Stiglitz 1975; Hart 1983; Willig 1985; Yarrow
1986; VY; Stiglitz 1993; Kane 1999). Indeed, the fact that managers have more information about
running the firm may be the reason they were hired by the non-expert owners. As a result, even if
contracts are carefully monitored by owners, managers may still be able to deviate significantly from
profit maximization by negotiating so-called "soft targets" (Hart 1983). A more serious monitoring
problem is introduced if ownership is widely dispersed. In such a situation, each individual owner will
have an incentive to free-ride off the costly monitoring efforts of other owners, and a sub-optimal level of
monitoring will result. This problem is reviewed in Furubotn and Pejovich (1972); Yarrow (1986); VY;
Vickers and Yarrow (1991); Shleifer and Vishny (1995); Dyck (1999); and Kane (1999).



31
A possible solution to this collective-action problem is to concentrate ownership among a few large
shareholders, who are likely to have more incentive and ability to monitor managers (Shleifer and Vishny
1986, 1995; Dyck 1999; Stiglitz 1999). Shleifer and Vishny (1995) review both the benefits and
drawbacks of this approach. They present empirical evidence showing that large shareholding is
associated with more active corporate govemance (Shivdasani 1993; Kaplan and Minton 1994; Franks
and Mayer 1994; Kang and Shivdasani 1995). However, Shleifer and Vishny also note studies showing
that ownership concentration results in above-optimal risk concentration (Demsetz and Lehn 1985);
harms efficiency if owners with larger shareholdings pursue their own interests at the expense of smaller
shareholders (Stulz 1988; Morck, Shleifer and Vishny 1988; Dyck 1999); and produces suboptimal
monitoring when owners are themselves agents, as in the case of banks (Morck, Shleifer, and Vishny
1990). Shleifer and Vishny (1995) conclude that concentrated ownership does not guarantee shareholder
monitoring of management contracts.
Since monitoring depends largely on the characteristics of the owners, it is not surprising that public and
private owners monitor in different ways. Alchain's (1965) seminal work on SOE govemance argues that
since all citizens can be considered SOE owners, an SOE's ownership is more widely distributed than a
private firm's ever could be. Moreover, since there is no way for any single owner to sell (alienate) his or
her share of an SOE, public owners stand to gain or lose less from firm performance than do private
owners, who can sell their shares. Alchain argues that these two factors combine to produce sub-optimal
levels of monitoring in the public sector. A related problem is that without a market for ownership,
information on firm performance is scarce and non-comparable. This junction of information and
monitoring failures is noted by Vickers and Yarrow (1991) and Lin, Cai and Li (1998), who argue that
while both public and private systems of ownership suffer from collective-action problems in monitoring,
the ability of markets to generate information gives private ownership a crucial advantage in the
monitoring process. Kane (1999) makes a similar argument, noting that monitoring is particularly weak
when ownership is diffuse and information is poor, and that both situations arise in public ownership.



32
This suggests that problems of monitoring in the public sector will be serious relative to admittedly
imperfect private monitoring, and result in higher management discretion and worse public performance.
An alternative approach is to consider government to be the owner of public firms, rather than all voters
(Yarrow 1986). Instead of being dispersed, ownership is highly concentrated, eliminating the collective
action problem and leading to more effective monitoring. However, if government is a concentrated
owner it faces the costs as well as the benefits of concentration: i.e., the government will bear mnore risk
than is optimal, and is free to pursue inefficient goals without the checking influence of smaller owners
(non-profit goals, in the case of SOEs). These difficulties, combined with the problems of opportunistic
behavior discussed earlier, suggest that monitoring of SOEs is no more effective than in the private sector,
and can in fact be worse (Vickers and Yarrow 1991, Boardman and Vining 1992).
Contracts
The literature suggests formal legal protection of owners as a second method of controlling managers.
While this approach tries to solve agency problems through a contract, the contract in this case broadly
describes the exchange of financing from the owner/investors for profit-maximizing services from the
manager, rather than narrowly specifying management punishments and rewards. Armed with such a
contract, owners can turn to the court system if they believe that managers have violated the contract by
failing to maximize owner welfare. As Dyck (1999) notes, this contract-enforcement process requires
that high-quality information be available to owners, as it both serves to alert them to managerial slack
and provide them with evidence in court. However, we have seen that information asymmetries between
owners and managers are significant, and in fact are part of the motivation for separating these functions.
This suggests that ex-post legal protections may be imperfect methods of controlling managers. Shleifer
and Vishny (1995) present empirical studies on the enforcement of such contracts in a variety of nations,
arguing that the differences in legal systems between nations account for much of the variation in
corporate governance strategies.



33
The characteristics of public ownership does not preclude the possibility of such a contract between the
SOE manager and government that can be enforced by the court system. Several nations have attempted
to reform their SOEs with such performance contracts. However, empirical studies indicate that
performance contracts are likely to fail. Looking at performance contracts in both industrialized and
developing nations, Nellis (1989) finds that the effectiveness of such agreements is low, and is often
reduced by unforeseen events, political pressures, and failure of governments to fulfil their obligations.
There is some evidence from China, however, that tying managerial rewards to firm performance
improves productivity, even under continued state ownership (Groves, Hong, McMillan, and Naughton
1994; Li 1997). Groves et al (1995) also provide evidence that SOE managers can be subjected to a sort
of labor market where performance is rewarded and failure punished.
Takeover
If neither direct monitoring nor legal regulation of the owner-manager relationship bring about efficient
manager behavior, takeovers present a third possible tool of corporate governance. By buying most or all
of a firm's shares, an investor can temporarily produce a very high concentration of ownership, thus
bypassing the collective-action problem discussed above (Yarrow 1986; VY; Shleifer and Vishny 1995;
Dyck 1999). Jensen and Ruback (1983) provide an important early analysis of the impact of takeovers,
finding that shareholders of the acquiring firm as well as shareholders of the target-firm benefit, and that
these gains are driven by efficiency rather than market power. Studies by Coffee (1986), Jensen (1988),
and Easterbrook and Fischel (1991) further support the view that takeovers address the ownership/control
problem, and VY present a model showing that managers respond to threats of takeover with relatively
higher effort.
However, doubts remain about the efficacy of takeovers. First, the purported benefit of takeovers is to
concentrate ownership, which facilitates management change. As we have seen, ownership concentration



34
suffers from problems of its own. Indeed, Shleifer and Vishny (1988) address the possibility that, if
managers in the bidding firms are the ones making decisions about acquisitions, takeovers may introduce
more opportunities for management discretion. A second objection claims that either the bidder will have
to buy shares at prices that reflect higher future profits (making the takeover almost prohibitively
expensive), or all current shareholders will choose to hold on to their shares, in the anticipation that they
will appreciate if the takeover is successful (Grossman and Hart 1980). Shleifer and Vishny (1988) and
VY counter that this effect is exaggerated, pointing to the fact that takeovers do in fact occur, although
they acknowledge that the expense of a takeover implies that only grossly inefficient firms will be
targeted.
Because shares in public firms cannot be sold, there is no threat of takeovers short of full-scale
privatization (Yarrow 1986, VY). Public managers can rest assured that inefficiency and mounting debts
are not likely to result in a drastic ownership change that would cost them theirjob. To the extent that
takeovers pose effective threats to management in the private sector, this deficiency puts public firms at a
disadvantage. It could be argued that full privatization is a public-sector analogue to takeovers (Wintrobe
1987, Caves 1990). However, there are several problems with this argument. First, while poor
performance in the private sector makes takeovers highly likely, poor performance in the public sector by
no means guarantees privatization. Second, while a credible threat to privatize may induce higher
managerial effort, sooner or later, the privatization must go forward, or credibility will be lost and
shirking will resume. Thus the performance effects of privatization threats do not support ongoing public
ownership.
Bankruptcy
Even if these three avenues of corporate control fail to promote efficient management, a firm in a
competitive market cannot continue making losses forever. At some point it must enter bankruptcy -
indeed, the very existence of bankruptcy implies the imperfections in the previously mentioned systems



35
(Stiglitz 1999a). Although the details of the bankruptcy process vary by country, the essential elements
are change in management, liquidation of assets, and restructuring of debt. Because of the difficulty of
collecting debts in bankruptcy (Baird and Jackson 1985; Weiss 1990; Gertner and Scharfstein 1991;
White 1993; all cited in Shleifer and Vishny 1995), both equity and credit owners prefer that bankruptcy
function as an ex-ante threat to management, rather than an ex-post remediation. Defining bankruptcy as
an excess of liabilities over assets, VY find that in an uncertain environment, the ex-ante threat of
bankruptcy is effective in boosting managers' performance and thus owner value. There are cases,
however, when bankruptcy's usefulness as a tool of corporate governance is limited. Shleifer and Vishny
(1995) warn that bankruptcy, with its reliance on efficient court systems and well-designed laws, is only
effective in developed nations. Taking the transition in Eastern Europe as an example, Stiglitz (1999a)
goes on to warn that the expected results of bankruptcy - change of management, repayment of creditors
and equity holders - do not always obtain, especially when institutions protecting property rights are
weak.
If SOEs face a credible threat of bankruptcy, this might constitute a final check on managerial discretion,
but VY and Vickers and Yarrow (1991) suggest that there is no public-sector equivalent of bankruptcy.
They acknowledge (like Laffont and Tirole, 1991a and 1993; and Stiglitz 1993) that hard budget
constraints are not inherently impossible to implement for SOEs, and that budget constraints can
sometimes be softened for private firms. These arguments suggest that the role of bankruptcy in the
control of public firms depends on specific policy choices by governments. There is evidence that these
policy choices often reflect political, rather than economic priorities. Looking primarily at socialist
economies, Kornai (1980) and Komai and Weibull (1983) find that, because loss-making SOEs will be
subsidized (by the government or government-directed banks), the SOE managers have little incentive to
improve efficiency or avoid unprofitable investments. Stiglitz (1993) also argues that politicians fail to
credibly commit to ending subsidies to SOEs, given their incentives to use SOEs to pursue political goals.



36
Sheshinski and Lopez-Calva (1999) present a simple model showing that whenever the political cost of
bankrupting an SOE exceeds the political cost of subsidizing it, politicians will extend subsidies. Because
this reduces the downside risk of investments, they argue that in such an environment SOE managers will
engage in inefficient investments. Dewatripont and Maskin (1995) and Berglof and Roland (1998)
develop more rigorous models of this process, highlighting the role of sunk costs in motivating continued
subsidies. Schmidt (1996) argues that even under a welfare-maximizing government, subsidies intended
to address externalities will actually reduce the cost-cutting incentives of SOE managers, thus requiring
yet larger subsidies. Schmidt presents privatization as a way for governments to credibly commit to
reduced subsidies. Empirical evidence suggests that soft budget constraints are indeed associated with
poor SOE performance (Shirley and Nellis 1991, World Bank 1995). Claessens and Peters (1997)
document this problem in detail by looking at Bulgaria, where bank financing of large loss-making SOEs
hindered the restructuring of those enterprises. They argue that the continued support for these inefficient
SOEs de-capitalized the banking system and upset the fiscal balance (through unpaid taxes). Djankov
(1999) describes a similar process in Romania, where a reform regimen for failing SOEs did not harden
budget constraints and therefore did not promote restructuring.
The literature just reviewed suggests that competition cannot substitute for private ownership; that
politicians in inefficient political markets may distort SOE operations for their own interests; and that
even if they don't, the task of motivating managers is even more daunting in the public sector than in the
private sector. Based on these analyses, the case for public ownership is limited to a small set of cases
(see Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny 1997 for a discussion of where to draw the line between public and private
provision of public goods). These insights are useful for policymakers currently faced with the choice
between public and private ownership. However, what advice can be given when SOEs already exist? In
the next section, we examine the case of reform through privatization, and identify the cases in which
privatized firms may not act like private firms.



37
5.   State Ownership and Privatization
The literature surveyed above suggests that in most cases private ownership is more effective than public
ownership. It is a further question whether aprivatized firm, a firm which has been moved from public to
private ownership, will perform in the same way as firms that have always been private. If there are
significant differences between private and privatized firms, then privatized ownership may not produce
better performance than public ownership. Most opponents of privatization base their arguments on this
problem. The private/privatized distinction is seen as particularly relevant in developing nations and in
situations where governments are self-interested. In this section we examine the situations when
privatized firms fail to behave like private firms. We also consider whether privatized firms should be
expected to behave like private firms, or whether the goal of privatization should be to simply improve
performance relative to state ownership. Finally, we examine the argument that changes in government
objectives, signaled by a willingness to privatize, may complicate the analysis of government ownership.
The factors that prevent privatized firms from behaving like private firms can be separated into two
general categories. First, the state of a country's markets and institutions can play a major role in
privatization outcomes. Second, the political motivations of policymakers can cause them to design sub-
optimal privatization plans. The affect of both factors on post-privatization performance is examined in
the following sections.
Institutional and Market Factors
The effect of a country's institutions and market structures on privatization has inspired a large literature
(see Havrylyshyn and McGettigan 1999 for a review focusing on transition economies; Shirley, Kikeri,



38
and Nellis 1992 for a discussion of developing nations). A major focus of this literature has been the
impact of market structure on privatization outcomes. In industrialized nations, the most common
market-structure concern is that privatization of natural monopolies will produce inefficient results (VY).
Options for handling natural monopolies in developed nations were reviewed in section 2. Recall that
these options included privatization and regulation through auctioned contracts, parallel geographic
monopolies, and regulatory plans that reward relative performance among contractors. In general, it has
been found that privatization and regulation of natural monopolies presents a viable alternative fo state
ownership. In developing nations and transition economies, there is concern that monopolies are likely to
exist because of pervasive market failure, lack of information, and high entry costs. Cook and
Kirkpatrick (1988) maintain that developing nations are marked by pervasive natural monopoly
conditions. Thus, they argue that privatization is likely to simply replace a public monopoly with a
private one. Adam, Cavendish, and Mistry (1992), surveying privatizations in seven developing
countries, characterize the industries into which the SOEs were privatized as highly concentrated.
Commander and Killick (1988) and Jackson and Palmer (1988) make similar arguments, claiming that
increasing returns and therefore natural monopolies are common in developing nations.
It is true that if a privatized SOE is able to establish or maintain a monopoly, allocative and productive
efficiency will suffer relative to the competitive-market outcome. Nevertheless, recalling that
competition effects fail to dominate ownership (see section 2), it is entirely possible that a private firm in
an imperfect market may perform better than a SOE. The record of privatizations in the developing world
supports this possibility, and weakens the arguments of this group of authors. Several major empirical
studies have found marked improvements in post-privatization performance in developing nations
(Megginson, Nash, Randenborgh 1994; Galal, Jones, Tandon, Vogelsang 1994; Ramamurti 1997; La
Porta and Lopez-de-Silanes 1997). Frydman et al (1997) and (1998), Claessens, Djankov, Pohl (1997),
and Pohl et al (1997) find similar results in transition economies. In the sample of the empirical literature
reviewed in this paper, out of 10 studies that look at post-privatization performance in developing nations,



39
eight report performance gains while two find no change. If natural monopoly were truly pervasive in
developing and transition economies, the empirical results would show weaker post-privatization
performance.
Underdevelopment of capital markets, bankruptcy procedures, and court systems are also cited as
institutional obstacles to effective privatization. Specifically, the weakness of these institutions,
particularly in transition or developing nations, is seen as reducing the effectiveness of private cbrporate
governance. Cook and Kirkpatrick (1988) and (1997) argue that weak capital markets and costly
information in developing nations preclude takeovers. Additionally, they maintain that underdeveloped
capital markets also soften budget constraints in developing nations. Looking at transition economies,
Stiglitz (1999a) identifies corrupt and underdeveloped court systems as a major impediment to efficient
bankruptcy institutions. Also looking at transition economies, Nellis (1999) notes that banks, often still
run by the state, failed to adequately harden the budget constraints faced by privatized firms. When
combined with cumbersome and uncertain bankruptcy procedures, he concludes that bankruptcy did not
provide an adequate check on management. Brada (1996) is skeptical of the view that banks in transition
economies, as the primary conduits of credit, can serve as de-facto owners. This study also blames
ineffective bankruptcy institutions for this failure. Stiglitz (1999a) also finds that state-run or recently
privatized banks in transition economies failed to harden budget constraints. Taken together, these
studies suggest that in developing and transition economies, institutional problems can weaken corporate
governance by preventing takeovers and softening budget constraints. If these problems are serious, a
case can be made (and Cook and Kirkpatrick 1988 and 1997 do) that privatization will result in sub-
optimal performance.
The critical question is not whether corporate governance is weak compared to standards in developed
countries, but whether state ownership produces better results. The empirical literature cited above
suggests that these institutional weaknesses do not prevent privatized firms from boosting their



40
performance relative to SOEs. Performance gains in privately operated water systems in Argentina
(Alcazar, Abdala, Shirley 2000), Cote d'Ivoire (Menard and Clarke 2000), and even Guinea (Clarke,
Menard, Zuluaga 2000), for example, suggest that underdeveloped markets, poor information, and weak
and poorly enforced bankruptcy and takeover laws do not necessarily mean that a privatized monopoly
will under-perform SOEs. Further evidence indicates that bankruptcy is not universally hopeless in
transition. Schmidt and Schnitzer (1993) provide theoretical evidence that the threat of bankruptcy has an
impact on the managers of newly privatized firms. Dittus (1994) offers evidence that banks have, on the
whole, allocated credit efficiently in transition economies, and Capek (1995) finds that newly-formed
banks are more able to break free of old lending institutions and achieve more efficient allocations of
credit. Commander, Dutz, and Stern (1999) report that with the admittedly large exception of the former
Soviet Union, Romania, and Bulgaria, most transition economies have introduced hard budget
constraints.
Political Goals and Privatization
The motivations for government policy are of utmost importance in shaping the performance of a
privatized firm. Most governments cite enterprise efficiency, private sector development, and budgetary
relief as the official objectives of privatization. Other objectives can, however, creep into a privatization
program and distort the operations of the privatized firms. These additional objectives are no surprise in
the framework of a rational, self-interested government, but they are also possible in models where
governments are assumed to maximize social welfare.
As noted by VY and Caves (1990), govemments often seek to maximize the revenues from a SOE sale.
One way to achieve this is to limit ex-post competition, thus raising the value of the firm's future income
stream. Another distortion noted by these authors arises when governments distribute ownership shares
as widely as possible for reasons of equity, diluting ownership among many small owners, with



41
detrimental effects on monitoring. Revenue maximization and an "equitable" distribution of shares can
be consistent with maximizing social welfare. However, the effect of these goals is to undermine the
overall efficiency of the economy. If the newly privatized firm is protected from competition, then the
gains in allocative and productive efficiency will be lower than privatization into a competitive market.
Britain's privatization experience in the 1980's produced this combination of privatization with curbs on
competition. VY find that in the telecommunications, natural gas, and electricity industries, government
policy deliberately limited the degree of entry and competition, to the benefit of incumbents and the
detriment of consumers and overall efficiency. Foreman-Peck and Manning (1988) examine accusations
of poor quality and low productivity at British Telecom, and find that the ideal strategy would have been
to split up the incumbent in a manner similar to AT&T's breakup. Based on the outcome of privatization
in Britain, Caves ( 1 990) is particularly critical of privatization plans that neglect competition-enhancing
measures. He argues that while state ownership is inefficient, private ownership is also inefficient unless
there is vigorous competition. Caves sees monopoly, natural and otherwise, as widespread and is
therefore skeptical of privatization in general. Kay and Thompson (1986), and Yarrow (1986) also
examine the British privatization experience, and reach similar conclusions. These authors are highly
critical of privatization without competition, arguing that the gains from privatization are lost if a public
monopoly is simply replaced with a private monopoly.
While the neglect of competition opportunities is important from a policy perspective, the critical
question is not whether the performance of privatized firms is optimal, but whether it is better than under
state ownership. Large-sample empirical studies suggest that even in imperfect markets and even in
LDCs, privatized firms can exhibit performance gains (Megginson, Nash, Randenborgh 1994; Dewenter
and Malatesta 1999; Frydman et al 1998; D'Souza and Megginson 1999a and 1999b). Out of the post-
privatization studies articles surveyed in section 6, 12 examined firms in industries with limited or
varying levels of competition. Seven of these studies showed improved performance, while five showed



42
little change. Two of these five had sample sizes of only one, however, and should be treated with
caution.
If governments are seen as self-interested, the scope for distortionary privatization policies is wider. First,
bowing to pressure from interest groups, governments may choose non-optimal methods of privatization
that include selling a SOE to the incumbent managers or employees. Ownership by these groups presents
a number of difficulties. Although manager ownership completely eliminates the ownership-coritrol gap,
the possibilities for capital infusion are limited (Estrin et. al. 1995) and the impact on performance is
theoretically ambiguous (Frydman et. al. 1997). The empirical literature, focusing mainly on voucher
privatizations in Russia and the Czech Republic, is critical of worker ownership. Most studies maintain
that firms owned by workers are unlikely to engage in necessary restructuring; worker-owners will
maximize non-profit objectives such as wages, job security, and reduced hours. These difficulties are
discussed by Earle et. al. (1995); Frydman, Gray et. al. (1998); Barberis et al (1996) Havarylyshyn and
McGettigan (1999); Kane (1999); Dyck (1999); Claessens and Djankov (1999); and Nellis (1999).
While such insider privatization does complicate the problem of governance, most transition governments
(notably Hungary, Poland, and Estonia) have successfully avoided this form of privatization -- in fact, the
countries of the former Soviet Union and the Czech Republic are the only examples of major insider
privatization. In their extensive review of the literature on transition economies, Djankov and Murrell
(2000) find that privatization is strongly associated with enterprise restructuring, except in the former
Soviet Union. It would be wrong to conclude, therefore, that political pressures make this form of
privatization impossible to avoid.
A second avenue through which government objectives can distort privatization is suggested by Boycko,
Shleifer and Vishny (1996b). They reject the usual model of government as a homogenous actor and
argue that governments, particularly in transition economies, are often uneasy coalitions of reformers and



43
traditionalists. In such divided governments, ministers are likely to pursue their own agendas, which can
include blocking reforms if the constituencies of those ministers benefit from the status quo. While the
reformers in a government may be able to push through a general privatization program, the anti-reform
ministers successfully prevent pre-privatization restructuring (such as layoffs, investment, or breakup of
monopolies). These authors maintain that the lack of restructuring before Russia's privatization can
largely be traced to that country's badly divided government.
An additional way for self-interested govemments to take advantage of privatization is selling the
enterprise at a heavy discount to a favored supporter in exchange for a bribe or political favors. Owners
chosen for their political clout may have incentives to distort SOE operations in ways that benefit their
political patrons, for example, by employing redundant workers or distorting prices. The government
may be more susceptible to demands for subsidies and protection from those favored owners than from
private owners in general. In such an environment, marked by soft budget constraints, limited
competition, weak corporate govemance, and continued emphasis on non-profit objectives, it is likely that
the performance of privatized firms will be sub-optimal. More importantly, it is possible that in such
circumstances their performance will not exceed that of SOEs. From a theoretical standpoint, however, it
is not clear that these abuses would be significantly worse than those that can occur under state
ownership. Refer to section 3 of this paper, and Jones (1985), Shleifer and Vishny (1994), Shirley,
Kikeri, and Nellis (1992), and Boycko, Shleifer, and Vishny (1996a) for a review of politically-motivated
abuse of SOEs.
Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997) make a distinction between corrupt politicians who seek bribes and
corrupt politicians who use patronage to reward political supporters. If patronage is more of a problem
than bribe-taking, they argue that privatization is desirable because it reduces opportunities for patronage,
while for this same reason politicians will privatize less than is optimal. On the other hand, if bribe-
taking is more likely than patronage, they argue that privatization may be risky because the process itself



44
may be corrupted, while for this reason politicians will privatize more than is optimal. Shleifer (1998)
extends this analysis by noting that if the costs of ongoing corruption in SOEs outweigh the potential
costs from a corrupt privatization, then privatization is still the best policy. This paper also claims that it
may be easier to rid a privatization process of corruption than to reform endemic corruption throughout
government. Frydman, Gray et al (1998) provide empirical evidence that political interference hinders
enterprise restructuring, although not necessarily in a corruption-driven framework.
The balance of the empirical evidence, however, indicates that despite the hazards of such corrupt
privatizations, the performance of privatized firms is superior to that of SOEs. Studies including data
from developing and transition nations (Megginson, Nash, Randenborgh 1994; La Porta, Lopez-de-
Silanes 1997; D'Souza, Megginson 1999a; Frydman et al 1997 and 1998; Pohl et al 1997) show that firms
improve their performance when privatized. Moreover, in the sample of studies reviewed in section 6, the
studies finding equal performance between SOEs and privatized firms tended to focus on developed
nations, where corruption has less explanatory value than elsewhere.
Altered Government Objectives?
Much of the rationale for privatization is based on the observation that governments distort SOE
operations to meet political goals. Furthermore, the literature examining the interactions of political goals
and privatization assumes that governments that operate SOEs inefficiently also run the risk of privatizing
inefficiently. Both of these positions, however, ignore the argument that the mere existence of a
privatization agenda implies that the government's goals have changed fundamentally. The objectives of
a government can change for a number of reasons: an exogenous economic shock that raises the
opportunity cost of inefficiency, or a change in the makeup of the government, through democratic or
non-democratic transition (World Bank 1995). Instead of maximizing its own rents and power, the
government places a priority on efficiency. It can be argued that governments that engage in privatization
are not the ones that only seek rents and power, and vice versa. Such a position has two implications:



45
governments that privatize, by their very nature, may be less tempted to distort the process for their own
interests; and governments that privatize may be better suited to efficiently managing SOEs. If these
arguments are true, then an obstacle to privatization (political interference in the process) is weakened
while a rationale for privatization (political interference in SOEs) is also undermined. No study known to
the authors has examined this issue directly, although Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997), Shleifer (1998),
and Keefer (1998) explore the implications of corruption and institutions for contracting out.
Despite the generally positive results of privatization, there are enough examples of privatization gone
wrong to undermine the argument that privatizing governments are less likely to pursue political goals in
the process. The privatization experience in Russia, in particular, suggests that governments that are
willing to privatize are still capable of engaging in self-interested behavior (Stiglitz 1999a and 1999b;
Shleifer 1997).
Alternatives to Privatization?
Up to this point, we have argued that privatization is generally the best way to reform SOEs and reduce
the distortions they create. However, the literature has come to focus on privatization as the primary
method of reform only in the last decade (World Bank 1995; Shleifer and Vishny 1997; Shleifer 1998;
Nellis 1999). Before this shift in emphasis, alternative reform methods were given equal or greater
weight (Shirley 1983; Bishop, Kay 1986; Galal 1991; Shirley, Nellis 1991). While the argument for
privatization has some theoretical basis and is strongly supported by the empirical evidence, many
continue to support alternatives to privatization. The failed privatizations in some transition countries
(the former Soviet Union and the Czech Republic), coupled with the apparent success of gradual SOE
reform in China, has added strength to the case for privatization alternatives.
McMillan and Naughton (1992) review the progress made by SOEs in China, making two important
observations. First, they argue that entry of new private firms is crucial to the overall transformation of



46
the economy. These new firms both reduce the scope of SOEs relative to the whole economy, and
provide competition for the SOEs. This competition, the authors argue, has more of an impact on SOE
efficiency than ownership. Second, they argue that non-privatization reforms can boost SOE
performance. Liberalization provides SOEs with market signals, enhanced autonomy gives managers the
ability to improve efficiency, anid the retention of profits gives them the incentive to do so. This argument
is backed by Groves et al (1994), who find that creating performance incentives for managers leads to
increased worker productivity. McMillan and Naughton (1992) conclude that China's strategy of gradual
reform, which liberalizes markets, encourages new entry, and reforms SOEs with new autonomy and
incentive structures, provides better results than the privatization-centered reforms in Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union. Stiglitz (1 999a and 1999b) draws attention to the relative growth performance
of China and the former Soviet Union, and draws similar conclusions.
McMillan and Naughton (1992) make a valuable point about the importance of new entry in transition
economies. The conditions that promote entry, and the effects of entry on allocative and productive
efficiency, have been largely overlooked by the transition literature. However, the McMillan/
Naughton/Stiglitz conclusion on the superiority of gradual, non privatization reforms has been challenged
at several levels. Sachs and Woo (1994) argue that the economies of China and Eastern Europe/former
Soviet Union present fundamentally different challenges, negating any comparison. They maintain that,
with such a large agricultural sector, China's problem was mainly one of development. The primary task,
after liberalization, was to promote entry and shift labor from agriculture to industry. In Eastern
Europe/former Soviet Union, on the other hand, the problem was one of structural adjustment in an urban
and "over-industrialized" economy. Privatization was necessary to re-structure industry. The initial
conditions of the two cases dictated the results: while development in China enhanced the welfare of
virtually all groups, re-structuring in Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union produced both winners and
losers. Dabrowski, Gomulka, and Rostowski (2000) find similar flaws in the McMillan/Naughton/Stiglitz
argument. They also argue that a simple comparison of growth rates in China and the former Soviet



47
Union is misleading. China is an underdeveloped, industrializing nation with significant growth
potential, while the FSU mainly faces problems of reorganizing an existing industrial base. Furthermore,
these authors claim that Chinese SOEs face much less effective - in fact, almost non-existent -- corporate
governance than that suggested by McMillan and Naughton. Finally, they note that the Stiglitz/
McMillan/Naughton argument ignores the successful "speedy" transitions of Hungary, Poland, Slovenia,
and (to a lesser extent) the Baltics. Citing EBRD data, the authors argue that in general, "early" reformers
and privatizers experience less income inequality and higher standards of living than do "late" reformers
and privatizers.
Moreover, McMillan and Naughton's argument that SOEs can be reformed from within fails to test the
appropriate counter-factual. Even if gradual reforms improved SOE performance relative to the status
quo, could privatization would have yielded still greater improvements? These authors implicitly
discount this possibility by pointing to the failed privatizations in the former Soviet Union, but they
ignore successful privatizations in other developing and transition nations.
* * * *
Extraneous objectives and underdeveloped markets and institutions can introduce distortions in the
privatization process that cause privatized firms to perform less well than a purely private firm. However,
this does not necessarily mean that a privatized firm will under-perform a publicly owned firm. Criticism
of privatization on the grounds that privatized firms do not perfectly mimic private firms (Stiglitz 1999a
and 1999b; Cook, Kirkpatrick 1997; Caves 1990; Kay, Thompson 1986) is misguided if privatized firms
still outperform SOEs. The empirical evidence suggests that this is the case -- while privatized firms may
not be identical to private firms, they are usually superior to state-owned enterprises.
In categorizing the success or failure of privatizations, it is useful to make distinctions between
privatization in developing, industrialized, and transition economies; and also between the transition
experiences of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Nellis (1999) provides a good overview of



48
such categorizations, and the conclusions that may be drawn from them. As noted before, privatization in
developing nations has generally been seen as a success (Megginson, Nash, Randenborgh 1994; Galal,
Jones, Tandon, Vogelsang 1994; Ramamurti 1997; Boubakri, Cosset 1998; La Porta and Lopez-de-
Silanes 1997). Privatizations in Eastern Europe have also generally met with success (Frydman et al 1997
and 1998; Pohl et al 1997; Claessens, Djankov, Pohl 1997). However, privatizations in Russia and the
other nations of the former Soviet Union have been marked by failures to restructure and poor firm
performance (Djankov 1999; Frydman, Gray et al 1998; Djankov and Murrell 2000; EBRD 1999).
Nellis (1999), synthesizing the lessons from the Russian experience, concludes that too much emphasis
was placed on speedy privatization, and not enough emphasis was placed on fostering competition,
creating property rights and court systems to enforce them, avoiding insider privatization, and the other
institutions necessary for well-functioning markets and corporate governance. These findings are echoed
in Stiglitz (1999a) and (1999b), and Shleifer (1997). Nevertheless, Nellis points to the record of
successful privatizations in Eastern Europe and maintains that privatization is a key part of transition.
6.   Empirical Work
A review of the evidence from empirical studies sheds additional light on the relative performance of
public and private enterprises. Empirical study of SOE efficiency began in earnest after Alchain (1965)
predicted that publicly-owned firms would be inherently less efficient than private firms. Early work
compared public and private firms in the same industry, and focused on utilities and infrastructure in
industrialized nations. Subsequent research branched into more competitive industries and developing
nations. Some scholars criticized these cross-sectional comparisons, arguing that the differences due to
ownership could never be isolated from other spurious differences (Millward, 1982, 1983). However, the
wave of privatizations in developed nations during the 1980's, particularly in Britain, opened a new
avenue of empirical investigation: same-firm performance before and after privatization could be



49
compared. Privatizations in developing nations and transition economies brought more opportunities for
such comparisons.
Table 1 shows a summary of this empirical literature. The main criteria for inclusion in this table were
frequency of citation, and inclusion in highly-cited review articles (Millward 1982; Millward and Parker
1983; Borcherding et. al. 1982; Boardman and Vining 1989; D'Souza and Megginson 1999a; and
Megginson and Netter 2000). The sets of articles cited by these reviews (particularly the last three) have
considerable overlap. It was essentially this common set of articles, with some additions from the earlier
literature on utilities, that was used to form Table 1. Secondary criteria for inclusion in this table were the
use of statistical tests and sample size. Studies with extremely small sample sizes were dropped unless
they were highly cited; studies that were based on anecdotal evidence only were always dropped. It is
possible that some forthcoming or unpublished articles have been omitted. The articles were categorized
into "private superior", "ambiguous", or "public superior" based on the balance of empirical evidence
presented in each study. If a study found public superiority in some cases and private superiority in
others, it was categorized based on the relative numbers of observations or restrictiveness of conditions of
the two findings. If public and private superiority are found in approximately equal numbers of
observations and in equally restrictive conditions, then the study is categorized as "ambiguous".
The included articles span the period from 1971 to the present, use a variety of performance measures,
and are balanced with respect to developing/industrialized nations. A variety of competitive
environments are considered, from statutory monopoly to perfect competition.



50
Table 1
Study                                Industry     Measure of   Methodology Sample Size Country    Market
Structure
Performance                              0 = LDC     1 =no
competition
1 = pre/post              1 = transition 2-3 = inter-
privatization                         mediate
0 = cross-                2 = indust-  4 = full
sectional                rialized     competition
comparison
Private    Hill 1982                             Textiles  capital + labor prod  0            81           0          4
Ownership Perkins 1983                           Mfg.      capital + labor prod  0           300           0          3
Superior   Kitchen 1976                          Garbage         cost            0            48           2           1
collection
Savas 1977*                           Garbage         cost            0           315           2        Mixed
collection
Crain, Zardkoohi 1978                Water            cost            0            ?            2          1
supply
Edwards, Stevens 1978                Garbage          cost            0            77           2          3
collection
Funkhouser, McAvoy 1979               Mfg.        cost, profits       0            99           0          4
Pryke 1992                            Mixed        cost, profits      0            6            2          3
Majumdar 1998                         Mixed        efficiency         0       industry-wide     0        mixed
Davies 1971                          Airlines     labor prod.         0            2            2          2
Ros 1999                             Telecom       labor prod.        0        17 countries   0, 2       mixed
Peltzman 1971                         Electricity    price            0           128           2          1
Bennett, Johnson 1979                 Garbage        price            0            2            2          2
collection
Dewenter, Malatesta 1999**            Mixed          profits          0           1369          2        mixed
Boardman, Vining 1989                 Mfg.      profits, labor prod   0           499           2          4
Boardman, Vining 1992                 Mixed     profits, labor prod   0           370           2         3, 4
Ehrlich, Gallis-Hamonno, Liu, and Lutter   Airlines   TFP             0            23          0, 2      mixed
1994
Gupta 1982                            Chemicals       TFP             0            ?            0          4
La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes 1997       Mixed     cost, profits, labor  1           218           0        mixed
prod
Frydman, Gray, Hessel, Rapaczynski 1997 Mfg.     cost, labor prod.    1           185           1          4
Ramamurti 1997                        Railroad    labor prod.         1            8            0          2
Megginson, Nash, Randenborgh 1994     Mixed    labor prod., profts    1            61          0, 2      mixed
Pohl, Anderson, Claessens, Djankov 1997 Mfg.     labor prod., TFP     1          6300           1          4
Eckel, Eckel, Singal 1996            Airlines        price            1            1            2          4
Claessens, Djankov, Pohl 1997         Mixed          profits          1           706           1          4
Boubakri, Cosset 1998                 Mixed          profits          1            79           0        mixed
Dewenter, Malatesta 1999**            Mixed          profits          1            63          0, 2      mixed
D'Souza, Megginson 1999a**            Mixed          profits          1            85          0, 2      mixed
D'Souza, Megginson 1999b**           Telecom         profits          I            17          0, 2      mixed
Frydman, Hessel, Rapacynski 1998      Mfg.        restructuring       1           130           1          4
Barberis, Boycko, Shleifer, Tsukanova  Retail     restructuring       1           413           1          4
1996
Galal, Jones, Tandong, Vogelsang 1994   Mixed     TFP/welfare         1            12          0, 2      mixed



51
Table 1 (cont'd)
Study                                Industry     Measure of   Methodology Sample Country    Market
Size                Structure
Performance                        0 = LDC     I =no
competition
1 = pre/post         1 = transition 2-3 = inter-
privatization                    mediate
0 = cross-           2 = indust-  4 = full
sectional            nalized     competition
comparison
Ambiguous Yunker 1975                            Electricity      Cost            0         73        2           1
Or No       Kemper, Quigley 1976                 Garbage          Cost           0          90        2           3
collection
Difference  Atkinson, Halvorsen 1986             Electricity      Cost           0         153        2           1
Forsyth, Hocking 1980                Airlines     labor prod.        0          2         2           2
Yarrow 1986                          Mixed           Profits         0          5         2           4
Kole, Mulherin 1997                  Mixed      profits, labor prod  0          17        2           4
Tyler 1979                           Mfg.             TFP            0          38        0           4
Caves, Christensen 1980              Railroad        TFP             0          2         2           4
Foreman-Peck, Manning 1988           Telecom      labor prod.        1          1         2           2
Adam, Cavendish & Mistry 1992        Mixed         labor prod.        1         6         0         mixed
countries
Frydman, Gray, Hessel, Rapaczynski 1998 Mfg.       labor prod.       1         218        1           4
Bishop, Kay 1989                     Mixed           Profits         1          12        2         mixed
Martin, Parker 1995                  Mixed      profits, labor prod  1          11        2         mixed
Boubakri, Cosset 1998                Mixed           Profits         1          16        0           ?
Newbery, Pollitt 1997***             Electricity    TFPlwelfare      1          1         2           2
Public      Meyer 1975                           Electricity      Cost           0         180        2           1
Ownership  Mann, Mikesell 1976                   Water            Cost            0        214        2           1
supply
Superior    Neuberg 1977                         Electricity      Cost            0         ?         2           1
Fare, Grosskopf, Logan 1985          Electricity  allocative + tech  0         153        2           1
efficiency
_Pescatrice, Trapani 1980             Electricity     cost            0         56         2           1
* Savas 1977 finds that competing private contractors for garbage collection are superior to public
ownership, which in turn is superior to an auctioned monopoly. Some may argue that this demonstrates
public superiority. In our judgement, these results support private ownership.
* * Dewenter and Malatesta 1999 is a single article. However, the authors conduct two very distinct
studies, using different samples and methodology. Thus we count these as two studies. D'Souza and
Megginson 1999a and 1999b are two distinct published articles.
*** Newbery and Pollit find an overall increase in welfare due to privatization. However, they find that
producers gain while the government and consumers lose. Therefore, we judged there results to be
"ambiguous" with regard to public or private superiority.
Of the 52 studies included in Table 1, 32 conclude that the performance of private and privatized firms
are significantly superior to that of public firms. 15 studies find either that there is no significant
relationship between ownership and performance, or that the relationship is ambiguous (different
evidence supports both public and private superiority). Five studies conclude that publicly-owned firms
perform better than private firms. The dominance of studies finding superior private performance is
robust across all sub-categories. Of the 31 studies that compare private and public firms operating in the



52
same industry, 18 conclude that private firms have higher performance, while 8 report mixed results and
five find superior public performance. Among the 21 studies that examine the performance of a firm
before and after privatization, 14 find that performance improves, while seven find no significant change.
Private superiority is also evident in both industrialized and developing nations. If we double count the
seven studies that examine both developing-country and industrialized-country privatization by including
them in both categories, then among industrial countries we have 19 private-superior studies, 11 neutral
studies, and 5 public-superior studies among industrial countries. Among developing nations there are 15
private-superior studies and 3 neutral studies, with no studies where public enterprises do better.
Private firms do better in fully competitive markets. In such markets, there are 11 private-superior studies
and five neutral studies. This advantage persists but is less pronounced in monopolistic markets, where
six studies find private superiority, five find neutral results, and five find public superiority. No studies
find that public ownership is superior in potentially competitive industries.
This body of empirical literature indicates that private or privatized ownership is superior to public
ownership in a variety of situations. The balance of studies show that firm performance improves after
privatization. Private firms perform better in all market structures, although the relative ambiguity of this
result in monopolies suggests that private ownership and competition are complements. Private
ownership has an advantage in both industrialized and developing nations, and this lead is more
pronounced in the latter. This result is especially noteworthy, given the argument by many SOE
proponents that market failures in developing nations make SOEs more viable relative to private firms.



53
7.   Conclusion
Our review found greater ambiguity about ownership in theory than in the empirical literature. In the
debate over the effects of competition, theory suggests that ownership may matter and if so, that private
firms will outperform SOEs. The empirical studies squarely favor private ownership in competitive
markets. Theory's ambiguity about ownership in monopoly markets seems better justified, since the
empirical literature is also less conclusive about the effects of ownership in such markets. Theories that
assume a welfare maximizing government suggest that SOEs can correct market failures. In contrast,
public choice theories are skeptical of the benevolent government model. Corporate governance theories
suggest that even well intentioned governments may not be able to assure that SOE managers do their
bidding. The empirical literature favors those skeptical of SOEs as a tool to address market failures. In
studies of industrialized countries, where we might expect more developed political markets to motivate
greater government concern with welfare maximization or better information and incentives to overcome
corporate governance problems, private firms still have an advantage. The private advantage is more
pronounced in developing countries, where market failures are more likely.
Theoretical critiques of privatization suggest that distorted objectives, market failures and poor
institutions will lead to costly failures. Some of the theoretical studies voicing concern about inevitable
privatization failures suffer from the absence of a realistic SOE counterfactual or are extrapolating from a
few, prominent cases, such as Russia. The 21 empirical studies we cite in Table 1 find that most firms do
better and all firms at least as well after privatization. None of the studies find that performance would be
better had they not been privatized.
The current debate over privatization is partly an understandable reaction to prominent and recent
failures. To the extent that it prompts further re-examination of the privatization experience, it will be a
welcome development. Additional empirical studies of privatization, especially of regulated monopolies,



54
is needed and could benefit from the longer experience and larger sample sizes now available. Sorting
out the effects of regulation versus ownership will be difficult but well worth the challenge, since many
governments are only now considering divestiture of monopolies. The political economy of privatization
also merits further examination.
The outcome of the privatization debate will be less healthy, however, to the extent that it feeds any
backlash against privatization and private ownership in general. The dialogue between theorists'and
empiricists on this point is weak. Part of the problem seems to be the choice of counterfactual. Much of
the recent theoretical critiques of privatization address deviations from optimal firm behavior. Not
surprisingly, since an optimal firm is hard to find, such a framework highlights the flaws and
shortcomings of privatized firns. Empirical research has taken state ownership as the counterfactual, and
as we have seen, documented gains in most cases. Construction of the state-owned counterfactual is a
problem since the privatization decision suggest that the utility function of the government has changed.
A government that puts higher value on efficiency or sound fiscal policies would operate its SOEs
differently as well. Those theories that do treat state-owned firms as a counterfactual to privatization do
not address this issue or consider how likely it is that distorted objectives for privatization signal perverse
goals for SOEs. Empirical research consists largely of before-and-after comparisons that do not capture
any change in government preferences, nor controls for changes in markets. Galal et al (1994) do try to
construct a counterfactual that they adjust for changes in government's objectives and control for other
changes, but such adjustments are necessarily arbitrary and the sample is small.
Since the choice confronting governments is between state ownership and privatization, rather than
between privatization and optimality, theory had left a gap that empirical work has tried to fill. Further
research is needed to model the institutional circumstances under which privatization will dominate state
ownership and vice versa.



55
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