An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public...

How can one account for the puzzling behavior of insider-managers who, in stripping assets from the veryfirms they own, appear to be stealing from one pocket to fill the other? The authors suggest that such asset-stripping and failure to restructure are the consequences of interactions between...

Many private infrastructure projects mix regulation that subjects the private company to considerable risk, a government or regulator that is reluctant to see the company go bankrupt, and high leverage on the part of the company. If all goes well, equityholders make a profit, debtholders are...

Driven by fiscal austerity and disenchantment with the performance of state-provided infrastructure services, many governments have turned to the private sector to build, operate, finance, or own infrastructure in power, gas, water, transport, and telecommunications sectors. Private capital...

Indonesia's nascent capital markets stand to benefit significantly from a thriving pension industry. Now is the time to reform the pensions system, while it has a vibrant economy, rapidly rising income, and a young and growing workforce. The author suggests three main reforms. First, to...

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the evolution of the financing structure of regulated privatized utilities and transport companies. To do so, the authors rely on a sample of 121 utilities distributed over 16 countries, and 23 transport infrastructure operators and 23 transport...

Argentina's provinces offer a unique opportunity to study bank privatization because so many transactions took place there in so short a period in the 1990s (1994-98). As the decade started, every province owned at least one bank, performance in publicly owned provincial banks was substantially...

Every approach to privatization entails tradeoffs. The chief advantage of case-by-case privatization -including sales for cash or initial public offerings (IPOs)- is efficiency. Case-by-case privatization generates revenues, gives shareholders control over managers, and provides access to...

Argentina has been a leader among developing countries in restructuring its banking sector. The authors analyze the performance of those banks before and after privatization and estimate fiscal savings associated with privatizingArgentina's banks rather than keeping them public and later...

The authors assess the effect of privatization on performance in a panel of Nigerian banks for the period 1990-2001. They find evidence of performance improvement in nine banks that were privatized, which is remarkable given the inhospitable environment for true financial intermediation. Their...