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The Impact of Public Ownership and Competition on Productivity
Author(s) -
GonzálezPáramo José Manuel,
Cos Pablo Hernández
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/j.0023-5962.2005.00299.x
Subject(s) - productivity , competition (biology) , public ownership , industrial organization , order (exchange) , public sector , empirical evidence , business , economics , public economics , macroeconomics , economy , finance , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , biology
Summary Are private firms more efficient than public ones? Does privatisation improve performance? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to disentangle the impact of ownership and competition upon business performance. This paper presents empirical evidence relating to the hypothesis that public ownership and competition are determinants of firms' productivity. It concludes that public ownership has a significant negative effect on productivity and also that privatisation has a positive impact on efficiency. Furthermore, increased competition is found to have a positive effect on productivity. These results are interpreted as confirming that privatisation is effective as a means of increasing firms' efficiency, at least in a non‐regulated and relatively competitive sector, such as manufacturing.