In this study, we employ the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data collected in 2002, 2005, and 2009 for 21,499 firms from 27 Eastern European and Central Asian countries to examine firm-level growth constraints faced by privatized firms versus those faced by the originally (de novo) private...

This paper studies the timing of privatization in 21 major developed economies in the 1977-2002 period. Duration analysis shows that political fragmentation plays a significant role in explaining government's decision to privatize: privatization is delayed longer in democracies characterized by...

We study the change in government control of privatized firms in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. At the end of 2000, after the largest privatization wave in history, governments retained control of 62.4% of privatized firms. In civil law countries,...

We study the relation between state ownership and cash holdings in China's share-issue privatized firms from 2000 to 2012. We find that the level of cash holdings increases as state ownership declines. For the average firm in our sample, a 10 percentage-point decline in state ownership leads to...

This study examines the pre- and post-privatization financial and operating performance of 208 firms privatized in China during the period 1990-97. The full sample results show significant improvements in real output, real assets, and sales efficiency, and significant declines in leverage...

We study the relation between state ownership and cash holdings in China's share-issue privatized firms from 1993 to 2007. We find that the level of cash holdings declines as state ownership increases. This negative relation is attributable to the soft-budget constraint (SBC) inherent in state...

Recent evidences indicate that privatization leads to enormous benefits to society almost without undesirable costs. However, stakeholders of privatization seem not to satisfy the resulting performance of privatized firms. Using data from 202 firms privatized from 37 countries during the period...

Newly privatized firms increase dividends after divestment, and also pay significantly higher dividends compared to always-private firms. We examine a sample of 83,468 firm-years (358 privatized and 4,894 always-private firms) across 26 countries and show that the dividend premium is...