Ownership versus Environment: Why are Public Sector Firms Inefficient?

In this paper we disentangle the sources of public sector inefficiency using 1982-1995 panel data on manufacturing firms in Indonesia. We consider two leading hypotheses: (1) public sector enterprises are inefficient due to monitoring problems and (2) public sector enterprises are inefficient because of the environment in which they operate, as measured by the soft budget constraint. The two models are nested in a production function framework and the empirical results provide support for the second hypothesis. Public sector enterprises are inefficient because of their access to soft loans; public sector ownership has no independent impact on productivity growth. The finding that ownership per se does not matter, but environment does, holds when we control for fixed effects and when we allow for the endogeneity of government loans. Interestingly, private sector firms with access to government loans did not perform more poorly than other private sector enterprises. Another dimension of the environment, i.e. import penetration, also matters; public sector enterprises that have been shielded from import competition are inferior performers.

Ownership versus environment : disentangling the sources of public sector inefficiency

The authors compare the performance of public and private sector manufacturing firms in Indonesia for 1981-95. They analyze whether public sector inefficiency is due primarily to agency-type problems ("ownership") or to the business environment in which public enterprises operate, as measured by soft budget constraints or barriers to competition. They nest the two alternatives in a production function framework. The results, obtained from fixed-effects specifications, provide support for both models. The business environment matters. Only public enterprises that received loans from state banks or those shielded from import competition performed worse than private enterprises. Ownership matters. For a given level of import competition or soft loans, public enterprises perform worse than their counterparts in the private sector. Eliminating soft loans to Indonesia's public enterprises would raise total factor productivity by 6 percentage points; the same result could be achieved by increasing import penetration by 15 percentage points. The authors show that these findings are not due to selection effects for either privatization or the receipt of soft loans.Labor Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Outsourcing Jobs? Multinationals and US Employment

Critics of globalization claim that US manufacturing firms are being driven to shift employment abroad by the prospects of cheaper labor. Others argue that the availability of low-wage labor has allowed US based firms to survive and even prosper. Yet evidence for either hypothesis, beyond anecdotes, is slim. Using firm-level data collected by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), we estimate the impact on US manufacturing employment of changes in foreign affiliate wages, controlling for changing demand conditions and technological change. We find that the evidence supports both perspectives on globalization. For firms most likely to perform the same tasks in foreign affiliates and at home ("horizontal" foreign investment), foreign and domestic employees appear to be substitutes. For these firms, lower wages in affiliate locations are associated with lower employment in the US. However, for firms which do significantly different tasks at home and abroad ("vertical" foreign investment), foreign and domestic employment are complements. For vertical foreign investment, lower wages abroad are associated with higher US manufacturing employment. These offsetting effects may be combined to show that offshoring is associated with a quantitatively small decline in manufacturing employment. Other factors, such as declining prices for consumer goods, import competition, and falling prices for investment goods (which substitute for labor) play a more important role.

Openness and Growth: A Time Series, Cross-Country Analysis for Developing Countries

This paper draws together a variety of openness measures to test the association between openness and growth. Although the correlation across different types of openness is not always strong, there is generally a positive association between growth and different measures of openness. The strength of the association depends on whether the specification uses cross-section or panel data (which combines cross-section and time series). For industrializing countries, which have exhibited significant fluctuations in trade regimes over time, long-run averages may not serve as very meaningful indicators of policy

Ownership Versus Environment: Disentangling the Sources of Public-Sector Inefficiency

An unanswered question in the debate on public-sector inefficiency is whether reforms other than government divestiture can effectively substitute for privatization. Using a 1981–1995 panel data set of all public and private manufacturing establishments in Indonesia, we analyze whether public-sector inefficiency is primarily due to agency-type problems or to the environment in which public-sector enterprises (PSEs) operate, as measured by the soft budget constraint and the degree of internal and external competition. The results, obtained from fixed-effects specifications, provide support for both models. Ownership matters because, for a given level of government financing or competition, PSEs perform worse than their private-sector counterparts. The environment matters because only PSEs which received government financing or those shielded from import competition or foreign ownership performed worse than private enterprises. The results suggest that the efficiency of PSEs can be increased through privatization, through manipulation of the environment, or through a combination of both approaches

Spillovers, Foreign Investment, and Export Behavior

Case studies of export behavior suggest that firms who penetrate foreign markets reduce entry costs for other potential exporters, either through learning by doing or through establishing buyer- supplier linkages. We pursue the idea that spillovers associated with one firm's export activity reduce the cost of foreign market access for other firms. We identify two potential sources of spillovers: export activity in general and the specific activities of multinational enterprises. We use a simple model of export behavior to derive a logit specification for the probability a firm exports. Using panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants, we find evidence consistent with spillovers from the export activity of multinational enterprises but not with general export activity.

Global capital flows and financing constraints

Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease the financing constraints of host country firms. But if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic banks, foreign direct investment may exacerbate financing constraints by crowding host country firms out of domestic capital markets. Combining a unique cross-country firm-level panel with time-series data on restrictions on international transactions and capital flows, Harrison, Love, and McMillan find that different measures of global flows are associated with a reduction in firm-level financing constraints. First, the authors show that one type of capital inflow-foreign direct investment-is associated with a reduction in financing constraints. Second, they test whether restrictions on international transactions affects the financing constraints of firms. The results suggest that only one type of restriction-those on capital account transactions-negatively affects firms'financing constraints. The authors also show that multinational firms are not financially constrained and do not appear to be sensitive to the level of foreign directinvestment. This implies that foreign direct investment eases financing constraints for non-multinational firms. Finally, the authors show that (1) foreign direct investment only eases financing constraints in the non-G7 countries, and (2) other kinds of flows, such as portfolio investment, have no impact on financing constraints.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Financial Intermediation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform

Global Capital Flows and Financing Constraints

Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease host-country firms' financing constraints. However, if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic basnks, direct foreign investment (DFI) may exacerbate financing constraints by crowding host country firms out of domestic capital markets. Combininb a unique cross-country firm-level panel with time-series data on restrictions on international transactions and capital flows, we find that different measures of global flows are associated with a reduction in firm-level financing constraints. First, we show that one type of capital inflow--DFI--is associated with a reduction in financing constraints. Second, we test whether restrictions on international transactions affect firms' financing constraints. Our results suggest that only one type of restriction--those on capital account transactions--negatively affect firms' financing constraints. We also show that multinational firms are not financially constrained and do not appear to be sensitive to the level of DFI. This implies that DFI eases financing constraints for non-multinational firms. Finally, we show that DFI only eases financing constraints in the non-G7 countries.