Work Identity at the End of the Line? tells the story of workplace culture and identity in the railway industry before during and after privatization in the mid 1990s. It combines rich interview material from workers and managers involved in the privatisation process with a fascinating background detail of nationalization. The book will be of interest to sociologists, cultural and economic historians as well as those studying culture change in business. MARKET 1: Academics, Researchers and Libraries in Universities and Business and Management Schools, especially in courses on public sector management, and the management of change; Policy makers in the public sector and those interested in privatization

Banking privatisation represents one of the major forces which are significantly changing the banking sector in Europe. Studying the process of banking privatisation thus helps to understand the dynamics of the sector. This book analyses - from the perspective of both commercial banking and investment banking - the various processes of banking privatisation in Europe and their effects on the strategies and structures of banks. In its theoretical part, the book considers technical and financial aspects of banking privatisation from Spain, France, Italy, Norway, Germany, and Russia. An indispensable reading for investment bankers, regulators as well as policy-makers responsible for the existence of efficient and stable banking systems.

On an unprecedented scale, nations at all income levels and across the political spectrum have initiated privatization programs over the past twenty years. In the course of this privatization movement, microeconomic efficiency arguments have become the standard justification for the divestment of public assets. This book presents an alternate view and argues that short-term macroeconomic considerations are often the true motive behind privatization programs. Why Do Government Divest? The Macroeconomics of Privatization is a comprehensive treatment of the macroeconomic issues of privatization. In addition to reviewing topics in economic growth and efficiency, this book explores the fiscal, monetary, balance-of-payments, and employment aspects of privatization. Several diverse case studies illustrate how the pursuit of such short-term political objectives can reduce the benefits of privatization.

One of the most enduring legacies of the 1980s has been the programme of privatizations that the Thatcher government set in train in the first half of the decade. Whole sectors of the UK economy which were formerly part of the public sector were sold off to the private sector. Some were bought out by their employees; others were bought by the public at large. Some public services were contracted out to the private sector; others were placed on a more commercial footing. The UK privatization programme had an influence on economic policy throughout the world. Programmes were also initiated in Asia, South America, Africa, Europe, North America, and, most recently, East and Central Europe. The purpose of this book, a companion volume to The Regulatory Challenge by the same editors, is to stand back and examine what has been learnt from the extensive programme of privatization that the UK government has completed, and to consider what aspects of privatization remain to be done. It attempts to evaluate systematically the privatizations that have been undertaken in different sectors of the UK economy over the last ten years. It examines what has happened and why, where the successes and failures have been, what lessons can be learnt for the design of privatization programmes elsewhere, and what the UK government can still usefully do in this area.

This book outlines the core concept of the theory of mixed oligopoly and presents recent results that have arisen in a mixed oligopolistic market. The wave of privatization since the 1980s has taken the development of the theory of mixed oligopoly in several directions. Although the main concern of the theory of mixed oligopoly focuses on the effect of regime change-especially privatization of a public firm-on social welfare, existing studies have not considered the difference in economic environments. With drastic changes in economic environments along with economic development in recent years, the domestic and foreign markets have become more and more integrated, firms have become concerned about corporate social responsibility, and governments or politicians have had various interests and preferences. Against that background, this book revisits the question of how privatization affects social welfare by incorporating regional and international interdependency and investigates how firms' activities for corporate social responsibility, governments' preferences, and political economic situations affect the market circumstance in a mixed oligopoly. The dynamic aspect of privatization is also investigated.

From 1997 to 2001, more than 4,000 privatization operations have been carried out in more than 100 countries, bringing in government revenues of over 1,362 billion dollars. The phenomenon, which grew exponentially at the end of the 1990s and then abruptly slowed down, had dramatic consequences on the performance of state-owned enterprises and a significant impact on industrialized countries, as well as emerging and less developed economies. Yet there have been surprisingly few attempts to provide a systematic empirical account of the privatization process at the worldwide level. Why do governments privatize? Why do some countries accomplish large-scale privatization programmes, and others never privatize at all? Is privatization a trend or a cycle? Furthermore, how do governments privatize? Do governments really transfer ownership and control of state-owned enterprises or does private ownership tend to coexist with public control? This book provides some answers to these important questions trying to test research hypotheses set forth by the recent economic theory of privatization. Comprehensive cross-country empirical analyses carried out over a period of more than twenty years are used in the book to show that privatization has taken place all over the world, sometimes spontaneously, more often under the pressure of economic and budgetary constraints. Several of the goals of the privatization have been met, but despite proclamations and programmes, only a small minority of countries has carried out a genuine privatization process, completely transferring ownership of state-owned enterprises to the private sector. A lack of political will is to some extent at the root of this reluctance. However this reluctance can be traced back partly to structural factors that would make an orderly privatization difficult, such as the absence of developed capital markets, appropriate regulation, and suitable institutions.

This volume in the International Papers in Political Economy series explores the latest developments in political economy, here focusing on experiences of privatization and of private finance initiatives. Topics covered include public-private partnerships, water privatization and electricity industry reform.

Few current issues in public management are as controversial as public-private partnerships (PPPs). The intensity of the debate reflects the importance of the concept to the government as it focuses on its central policy objective of improving public services, and the degree of opposition that is ranged against it. Opinion is divided with alternative views emerging across the political spectrum. "Private Public Partnerships" presents a fresh and wide-ranging review of the core issues behind the debate, capturing the experiences and insight of practitioners at the forefront of the first wave of PPP programs, research and analysis from leading academics who have studied the performance of PPPs, and critical views from advocates and opponents of the concept.

The book addresses the management of privatization in post-communist countries and is aimed at defining and analyzing contextual and organizational characteristics of privatization in these transitional economies to build effective business concerns that behave competitively. While privatization has recently become popular and widely used in former socialist countries, its organizational requirements have often been overlooked. The book demonstrates salient features as well as dynamic relationships among various organizational properties of privatized firms. The volume includes both conceptual foundations and practical suggestions for transformation from a command economy to a market economy from a managerial and organizational perspectives. Additionally, it includes examples of privatization in Eastern and Central Europe. It will appeal to students, policy makers, and managers of privatization in post-communist countries.

This book presents an outstanding body of research on theoretical and practical aspects of the various applications of privatization in post-communist countries. A thorough analysis of strategy, structure, behavior, and process of transformation from a command to a market economy is discussed. The volume presents illustrative cases from Eastern Europe and provides a wide range of critical issues including planning, restructuring industrial organization, technology management, and human resource management based on personal experience of the authors or extensive studies on privatization in former socialist countries. It is an excellent source for further understanding the reasons for successes or failures of a variety of privatization applications.

Privatising firms and liberalizing their market environment generates in Eastern Europe a variety of problems, many of which are not common to the analogous attempts in industries countries. A first difference between the two experiences resides in establishing the value of the firm or of the assets that are being privatized. A second main difference concerns the lack of the record of market performance for the firm. The book explores these open questions through an overview of on-going and proposed processes in Section 1. In Section 2 theoretical foundations of privatization processes are proposed with respect to the financial market, industrial relations and foreign trade. A final key question is faced in Section 3: 'is there any alternative to privatization?'

A study of institutional transformation over 50 years that mirrors changing perceptions of economic development in Britain's aid policies. CD's development impact is increasingly seen in terms of achieving economic externalities. Forthcoming privatization raises new issues of the compatibility of CD's developmental role with meeting the requirements of private investors and capital markets.

Challenging the prevailing view of privatization, this book analyzes the state of privatization around the world and offers policy suggestions. It includes original material of an analytical, empirical, and case study nature on the theory and practice of privatization, its relationship with the globalization of capital, its political and ideological underpinnings, its political, social, and economic consequences around the world. Its originality, currency, and critical perspectives make it a unique source for a wide variety of audiences.

The book's opening chapters deal with an extensive theoretical introduction followed by discussions on contracting out, public enterprise reform, and UN-led evaluations of contracting performance. In part two, the book turns to privatization and its flaws in major industrialized nations, including the United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and Australia. Part three analyzes privatization and its effects on policy and administration in Asian and Middle Eastern countries, including Post-revolutionary Iran, India, Singapore, Hong Kong-China, and Arab developing countries. Arguing that privatization is a poor policy with many dangers, the book offers suggestions for serious reform of public enterprise management and for alternatives to privatization.

Central and Eastern European countries are facing the transition from central to market systems with different strategies and capacities. As the task of societal transformation is without precedent in world history, the massive economic restructuring has revealed the need for distributive justice and general well-being. As the editors and contributors to this volume point out, the monolithic preoccupation with economic restructuring in a market economics framework is implemented at the expense of social protection and security. In contrast to traditional views of privatization as only an economic or managerial phenomenon, this collection approaches privatization as a broader integrated process of societal transformation. Privatization as defined here consists of integrated processes of societal restructuring that affect sociopolitical, economic, and ideological constructs as well as human and physical capital development, transformation of family structures, market stabilization, and organization of social care. Public policymakers as well as scholars and researchers of contemporary Eastern Europe will find this collection of great interest, and an important challenge to the economic models of privatization which undervalue social costs.

A new appraisal of the relationship between the Presidency and Congress in Argentina over the first two decades of its democratic regime. Mariana Llanos uses the processes of privatization and state reform in Argentina to reassess the performance, functions, and stature of these institutions as the country embarked on a program of change. This is a valuable contribution to the debate on the development of political institutions in Latin America.

This is Volume II of Professor Parker's authoritative Official History of Privatisation, covering the period from the re-election of Margaret Thatcher in 1987 to the election of Tony Blair in 1997. Volume II considers in detail several of the major privatisations, including those of airports, steel, water, electricity, coal and the railways, as well as a number of smaller ones. Each privatisation involved major challenges in terms of industrial restructuring, organising successful sales and, in a number of cases, establishing effective regulatory regimes. The policy evolved and new methods of selling and regulating were put in place that enabled further disposals to occur. Monolithic nationalised industries with their emphasis on the benefits of economies of scale, vertical integration and rationalisation, were replaced by industrial structures rooted in the importance of commercial management, risk taking and competition. In government departments and parts of the National Health Service, direct employees were replaced by private contractors, and private investment became a characteristic of public infrastructure in the form of PFI/PPP schemes. This study draws heavily on the official records of the British government, to which the author was given full access and on interviews with the leading figures involved in each of the privatisations, including ex-ministers, civil servants, business and City figures, as well as academics that have studied the subject. This book will of great interest to students of privatisation, British political history and of business and economics in general.

In this special issue, leading neuroscientists and neurologists present comprehensive review papers and empirical studies on the topic of the neural basis of self-identification. From philosophical definitions to single-case studies, the articles provide the reader with a broad view of the self in contemporary neuroscience. Review papers address the fundamental question of how to define and study the construct of identity. Methods in empirical studies range from socio-linguistic analyses to neuroimaging and diverse patient populations. As a whole, this issue provides a diverse sample of the myriad of ways in which identity is defined and studied in contemporary neuroscience.

Establishing a linkage between privatization and development is becoming increasingly important to decision-makers, economists, and political scientists. This book links privatization as an economic, political, and social phenomena with participation, decentralization, and development. It shows that privatization has rarely lived up to the ideal of generating sustainable development. In Part 1 the author looks at the relationship between privatization and development in theory and practice while in Part 2 the case of Jordan highlights the difficulties decision-makers face in implementing privatization.

Traces the accelerating trend towards privatization in the criminal justice system In contrast to government's predominant role in criminal justice today, for many centuries crime control was almost entirely private and community-based. Government police forces, prosecutors, courts, and prisons are all recent historical developments-results of a political and bureaucratic social experiment which, Bruce Benson argues, neither protects the innocent nor dispenses justice. In this comprehensive and timely book, Benson analyzes the accelerating trend toward privatization in the criminal justice system. In so doing, To Serve and Protect challenges and transcends both liberal and conservative policies that have supported government's pervasive role. With lucidity and rigor, he examines the gamut of private-sector input to criminal justice-from private-sector outsourcing of prisons and corrections, security, arbitration to full "private justice" such as business and community-imposed sanctions and citizen crime prevention. Searching for the most cost-effective methods of reducing crime and protecting civil liberties, Benson weighs the benefits and liabilities of various levels of privatization, offering correctives for the current gridlock that will make criminal justice truly accountable to the citizenry and will simultaneously result in reductions in the unchecked power of government.

Hella Engerer analyzes the emergence, evolution, and theory of property rights and establishes the limits for privatization of state-owned enterprises in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe. She counters the assumption that reduction of the state sector helps to create the basis for a private property system, showing that privatization presupposes a stable framework for property. This is a major contribution to the understanding of the emerging economic order of Central and Eastern Europe.

Much could be gained from the privatization of social security--but can the gains actually be delivered? Dixon, Hyde, and their contributing authors take a balanced look at where we are now, and where we seem to be moving, on the issues of social security privatization and come up skeptical. There will be tradeoffs, but will the benefits outweigh the costs? Their volume examines a variety of settings in Latin America, Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa, where the marketization of social security appears most hotly contested. As a contribution to this new, energetic gobal policy discourse, the book will be of special interest to policymakers in the public and private sectors, and particularly in organizations where concerns about the growing cost of employee benefits have become critical.

Dixon, Hyde, and the others start by showing how the concept of social security has changed dramatically over the last 20 years--not just in the United States but throughout the world. The collectivist ideology that has long underpinned social security policy has been challenged by the emergence of an ideology of individualism. But can one presume that the desires of government to privatize are driven purely by the need to achieve neoliberal policy goals by that means? Too simplistic, say the contributors. Marketization offers the promise of reduced dependency on the state, reduced public expenditure and thus lower taxes, enhanced competitiveness internationally, more efficient delivery of social security services, and other advantages--but whether these promises would be kept seems to depend on a variety of factors. Among them, explored in this volume, are the level of development and sophistication of the capital markets, the degree of market competition that can be achieved and sustained, and the capacity of the state to develop and implement governance mechanisms to ensure that private providers act in the public interest. The volume also examines two daunting challenges to governments: how to design a set of regulations that can protect the public interest in perpetuity, and how to resist the calls for government subsidies to support the economic rent expectations of privatized providers. The contributors and editors develop these and other points concisely and readably, and in doing so offer important lessons from the experiences of others worldwide.

Privatization was the fundamental pillar of transition from plan to market in former socialist countries. But little is known about the fate of companies that were privatized in large scale privatization schemes such as mass privatization or management-employee buyouts. This is the first original study aiming to fill this gap. It assesses "wholesale privatization schemes" in three leading transition countries - the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia - in terms of the evolving concentration of ownership and relations to firm performance.

Advances in Financial Economics publishes peer reviewed quality manuscripts on any aspects of financial economics including corporate finance, financial institutions and markets and microeconomics.

The papers which make up the chapters of this book were given at a seminar in Oxford. The event took place following the election of the first Labour government for 17 years and following an announcement of the consultation process leading up to the publication of a Transport White Paper. The debates in the book contain reflections on the legacy of the previous administration and the challenges facing the new government.

Over the past decade India has been undertaking a program of economic reform, and at the same time the economy has been growing at a high rate. As part of the reform program, and in line with prevailing economic thinking, India has been privatizing its large, ungainly public sector. One assumption underlying this program is the dogma that public sector enterprises are doomed to inefficiency, and that competitive market forces can be relied on to make firms more efficient once they are privatized. But is this really true?
Combining rigorous data analysis with case studies to provide a balanced evaluation of the process of deregulation and privatization within the overall context of economic reforms, the author demonstrates, remarkably, that, contrary to the prevailing view, private sector firms do not outperform public sector firms across all sectors. He also shows that revenue-raising considerations have weighed more heavily with the government than efficiency objectives. Overall, this study of the reform process in India, with its unique longstanding mix of private and public sectors, will be of great interest to all those studying reform and transition worldwide.

The transformation of public ports into commercially orientated and profitable entities is occurring apace in the Asia-Pacific region. This timely book is the first to take a regional perspective on port reform and port privatisation. A range of countries are examined, including China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.The book's contributors are academic specialists in the fields of port economics and management, whose country studies illustrate a variety of port privatisation methods and outcomes in an economically, politically and culturally diverse region connected by extensive maritime trade networks. Significantly, the book concludes that privatisation of ports is an important but far from universal approach to reforming the region's ports. Focusing exclusively on port privatisation in the Asia-Pacific region, this book will be of great interest to academics and policymakers who are interested in port reform, together with those interested in privatisation more generally in the Asia-Pacific region.