Privatization: What We have Learned

Sergei Guriev (1, 2) , William Megginson (3)

1 CEFIR - Center for Economic and Financial Research
2 CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research
3 OU - University of Oklahoma

Privatization is one of the major economic phenomena in recent economic history. This paper summarizes empirical research on the effect of privatization on the performance of privatized firms and on the society. The extant evidence from privatizations in many developed and developing shows that privatization usually results in an increased productivity and positive effects on the society. The effect of privatization depends however on economic institutions in place, in particular on rule-of-law, competition, hard budget constraints, quality of governance and regulation. We pay a special attention to the cases of Russia and China and show that their experience is consistent with the conventional wisdom once one accounts for an appropriate counterfactual.

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Sergei Guriev, William Megginson. Privatization: What We have Learned. Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) 2006, The World Bank, Jan 2006, Saint-Pétersbourg, Russia. ⟨hal-03459145⟩