Is privatization per se socially beneficial? Or do those benefits depend on the subsequent changes in the regulatory regime? In this paper, building on Vogelsang, Jones and Tandon (1994), we answer these questions by analyzing three different counterfactuals about British Telecom privatization...

Abstract This paper extends public spending-based growth theory along three directions: we assume that exogenous and constant technological progress does exist and that both population change and the ratio of government expenditure to income follow a logistic trajectory. By focusing on the...

This paper presents a simple principal-supervisor-agent model of the investment game between a supranational player (the principal), such as the European Commission, a regional government (the supervisor), and a private firm (the executing agency) . The EC is a benevolent social welfare...

In this paper we test the empirical evidence of an impact of privatisation on output in the UK , through macroeconomic transmission channels. While most privatisation studies focus on microeconomic shocks, namely at firms' level, we are interested to see whether a large scale privatisation...

The shadow wage is the social opportunity cost of labor. After reviewing earlier theoretical and empirical literature, we define four labor market conditions: fairly socially efficient (FSE), quasi-Keynesian unemployment (QKU), urban labor dualism (ULD) and rural labor dualism (RLD). We offer,...

The standard electricity industry reform paradigm in several EU countries since the 1990s includes privatization, unbundling, liberalization. While the implementation and design of reforms widely differs across the EU, the European Commission insists on a rather unified approach, aiming at the...

In the past two decades privatisation and liberalisation of network industries providing services of general economic interest (SGEI), have been particularly significant in the European Union. Wide variations around a common policy trend can, however, be observed across countries and sectors. We...

Public enterprises are production units of goods or services under government control. In spite of wide privatizations in the last two decades, public provision in this form can be observed in many countries and sectors, particularly in education, health, transport, energy and environment. This...

This paper offers a comprehensive evaluation of the welfare impact of a policy usually regarded as highly successful and vastly imitated worldwide: the privatisation policy pursued in the UK by MrsThatcher's government (1979-1990) and subsequently by Mr Major's government (1990-1997) The British...