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Is Privatization Necessary?
John Nellis
2
percent of China’s industrial production and are That leaves a variance to explain—and ownership is
growing far more rapidly than the traditional state- a strong candidate for a good part of the explana-
owned enterprise (SOE) sector. Their financial and tion.
economic performance surpasses that of the tradi-
tional SOEs by two or even three times. They are a Empirical work
stunning example of how positive performance can The second strand of the argument is empirical. It is
be achieved by firms that are not privately owned— based on several recent and rigorous studies that
but that are made to act as if they were. have looked at firms before and after privatization.
These recent studies show generally, and impres-
Added to these positive cases are the findings of a sively, improved performance after sale. A Journal of
fairly extensive literature, most of it dating from the Finance article2—by Megginson, Nash, and van Ran-
early 1980s, that tried to measure public versus pri- denborgh—compares the pre- and postprivatization
vate performance. This was done basically on a financial and operating performance of sixty-one
“with and without” basis; that is, comparisons were companies from eighteen countries in thirty-two
between roughly similar public and private enter- industrial sectors. The study shows strong postsale
prises in operation. The conclusions reached were performance—increased real sales, greater profitabil-
by no means unanimous, but more often than not ity, increased investment spending, improvements in
the literature suggested that, after correcting for mar- operating efficiency, and, most surprising, a slight
ket structure, there are no real differences between increase in work forces.
public and private ownership. The policy implica-
tion is that perceived deficiencies of public enter- A second study, on the welfare consequences of
prise performance can be corrected by changes in selling public enterprises,3 was conducted by the
policy, incentives, and institutions, and that owner- World Bank in collaboration with Boston University
ship change is not necessary. economists. This study looked at pre- and postsale
performance in profitability and productivity in
In light of all this, how can one still reasonably con- twelve firms in four countries. It went on to construct
tend that ownership matters? an elaborate counterfactual, to determine what
would have happened had the enterprises not been
Why ownership matters privatized. The authors then were able to say “here
is what was actually happening before sale, here is
Probability what actually happened after the sale, here is what
The first strand of the case is probabilistic in nature. we reason would have happened under continued
While private firms do not always outperform pub- government ownership.” In constructing this scenar-
lic enterprises, the evidence shows that they usually io, they did their best to isolate and neutralize the
do. For example, over the years, the World Bank gains and losses due to factors other than divesti-
has noted that rates of return on equity invested in ture. They then subtracted the hypothetical from the
industrial or commercial public enterprises often historical, and thus derived a measure of the gains
are about a third of those in the country’s industrial due to ownership change. This study quantifies the
private sector. The overall contention is that there welfare gains and losses of the various actors in the
are two spectra of performance from good to bad— process; that is, the costs and benefits to the selling
one for public enterprises, one for private firms. governments, purchasers—domestic and foreign—
There is a fair degree of overlap between the two. workers, consumers, and competitors. The results
But the private sector performance spectrum ex- are as follows: in eleven of twelve cases studied,
tends somewhat to the right of the public enterprise there were positive welfare effects for society be-
performance spectrum—and mean performance for cause of the sale, and improved performance at the
private enterprises is also somewhere to the right. level of the firm.4
3
Compromise and backsliding cial over noncommercial aims, the results are, as we
The third and final strand of the argument for pri- have seen in China, very good. But they tend not to
vate ownership is political and organizational in last. In most instances there is pronounced backslid-
character. The idea is twofold. First, as noted, most ing. The common story is that bad times make for
governments find it difficult if not impossible to good policies—in crises governments do establish
apply the entire package of qualifying conditions the precedence of commercial objectives, they do
that are essential for reforms short of ownership impose a harder budget constraint, and they do give
change to work. The landscape, particularly in autonomy to public enterprise managers to achieve
developing countries, and now in ex-socialist coun- commercial aims. But again and again, when the
tries as well, is littered with partial attempts to im- crisis fades, or when the regime changes, or when
pose reform where the government owners hadn’t some major political claim arises, commitment to the
the will or the fortitude or the knowledge or the priority of commercial aims and to noninterference
capacity or the luck to impose the whole of the in day-to-day management of the firm fades with it.
reform package—and the results were minimal, Examples of backsliding include the New Zealand
modest, or nonexistent. Post Office, the Japanese National Railway, Pakistan
public industrial enterprises, and some of the
There are innumerable examples in which govern- Korean government invested enterprises.
ment owners kept prices for the products of suppos-
edly reformed public enterprises too low to cover Conclusion
costs, out of fear of the political consequences of Based on this reasoning and evidence, it is clear that
price increases. Governments may shut off direct ownership matters—that it is a significant determinant
budget flows to public enterprises, but few then go of the profitability and productivity of an enterprise.
on to block concessionary transfers from the bank- Political and organizational factors are fundamental to
ing system. Governments grant operational autono- the reason why. Ultimately, as Oliver Williamson is
my to managers, but not with regard to hiring and fond of saying, “politics trumps economics.”
firing, or plant location, or from whom to obtain
inputs. Technically innocuous board of director re- 1
Ian Duncan and Alan Bollard, Corporatization and Privatization:
forms have been halted in Kenya, Morocco, and Lessons from New Zealand (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1992).
2
William L. Megginson, Robert C. Nash, and Matthias von Randenborgh,
elsewhere because board membership is a lucrative
“The Financial and Operating Performance of Newly Privatized Firms:
core part of the patronage system. The list is end- An International Empirical Analysis,” Journal of Finance 49(2): 403–52
less, and the point is obvious: most governments (1994).
3
have noneconomic objectives for their public enter- Ahmed Galal, Leroy Jones, Pankaj Tandon, and Ingo Vogelsang,
Welfare Consequences of Selling Public Enterprises: An Empirical
prise systems. While they want them to be profitable Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
and productive, they are most often unwilling or 4
There is much else that is striking in this study. For example, it shows
incapable of allowing these commercial aims to take clearly that policy matters as well as ownership, that macroeconomic
liberalization in conjunction with privatization is a powerful combina-
clear precedence over the noncommercial. Thus, tion, and that effective regulation must accompany (preferably pre-
their reform efforts tend to be partial. cede) the privatization of infrastructure firms if divestiture is to yield its
full potential.
Second, in the few cases in which governments do
establish and maintain the precedence of commer- John Nellis, Manager, Private Sector Development
This series is published to share ideas and invite discussion. It covers financial and private sector development as well as
industry and energy. The views expressed are those of the authors and are not intended to represent an official statement of
Bank policy or strategy. Printed on recycled paper.
Comments are welcome. Please call the FPD Note line to leave a message: 202-458-1111; or contact Suzanne Smith, editor, Room
G8105, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, or Internet address ssmith7@worldbank.org.