From state to market revisited: more empirical evidence on the efficiency of public (and privately-owned) enterprises

For several decades public enterprises have been criticised for their poor economic performance. Many economists take it as “conventional wisdom” that publicly owned enterprises are inefficient by their very nature. This seemed to be proved by what is probably the most cited survey worldwide, that was written by Megginson and Netter (2001). They claim: “Research now supports the proposition that privately owned firms are more efficient and more profitable than otherwise-comparable state-owned firms” (p. 380). The objective of this paper is to question the proposition that public enterprises are necessarily less efficient as their private counterparts. In doing so, we argue that profits are not a reasonable performance measure for public enterprises. However, our main focus is to present a much more comprehensive review of the empirical evidence than was provided by Megginson and Netter. The evidence indicates that these authors’ conclusions were biased in favour of privatization despite the evidence indicating that the true picture is much more differentiated

From state to market revisited: more empirical evidence on the efficiency of public (and privately-owned) enterprises

For several decades public enterprises have been criticised for their poor economic performance. Many economists take it as “conventional wisdom” that publicly owned enterprises are inefficient by their very nature. This seemed to be proved by what is probably the most cited survey worldwide, that was written by Megginson and Netter (2001). They claim: “Research now supports the proposition that privately owned firms are more efficient and more profitable than otherwise-comparable state-owned firms” (p. 380). The objective of this paper is to question the proposition that public enterprises are necessarily less efficient as their private counterparts. In doing so, we argue that profits are not a reasonable performance measure for public enterprises. However, our main focus is to present a much more comprehensive review of the empirical evidence than was provided by Megginson and Netter. The evidence indicates that these authors’ conclusions were biased in favour of privatization despite the evidence indicating that the true picture is much more differentiated

Was Sie schon immer über Public Private Partnerships wissen wollten… Vorstellung des Projektverbunds "Public Private Partnership" des Deutschen Forschungsinstituts für öffentliche Verwaltung

Der vorliegende Beitrag skizziert, nach einem Überblick über die mit der Einführung von Public Private Partnerships verbundenen Herausforderungen, den interdisziplinären Projektverbund "Public Private Partnership" des Deutschen Forschungsinstituts für öffentliche Verwaltung. Ziel des Verbunds ist es, Forschungslücken zu schließen, belastbare Daten zu PPPs in Deutschland zu generieren und ein besseres Verständnis für die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und Akteure zu gewinnen, die über das Zustandekommen oder Nicht-Zustandekommen von PPPs in Deutschland entscheiden.The following article, after addressing current challenges related to the successful introduction of public- private partnerships, summarizes the research agenda of the interdisciplinary project group on "public-private partnership" at the German Research. Institute for Public Administration. The overall research goal of the project group is to close research gaps in the context of public-private partnerships, to gather reliable data on public-private partnerships in Germany and to gain a better understanding of the institutional framework and of how actors decide about the establishment or rejection of public-private partnerships in Germany