Privatization and Utility Regulation in Developing Countries: the Lessons So Far

The privatization of utilities has grown in developing countries in recent years. Privatization transactions for the utilities sector have accounted for over a third of all sales in developing countries since 1988. The introduction of privatization has not necessarily meant more competition. Consequently, utility privatization has led in many cases to the creation of regulatory structures that aim to protect consumers from monopoly abuse and to provide incentives to firms to maintain efficiency. Case studies drawing on examples from the telecommunications, electricity and water sectors indicate that creating effective regulation and a competitive environment is a difficult and slow process. The cases have shown that regulation rather than privatization achieved the largest gains. Similarly, although the variety of regulatory measures that have been introduced have made a difference, the most tangible benefits, particularly to consumers, result from the establishment of competition. The case studies have shown that privatization has preceded the development of effective regulation and competition. The development of regulatory structures is constrained by the capacity of governments to enforce regulatory rules and monitor contracts. Fostering conditions that encourage competition and lessen anti-competitive behaviour by incumbents is a beneficial but slow process.     

International Trade and Strategic Privatization

The literature on mixed oligopoly does not consider the strategic interaction between governments when they decide whether to privatize their publicly‐owned firms. In order to analyze this question, we consider two countries and assume that publicly‐owned firms are less efficient than private firms. We obtain that when the marginal cost of the publicly‐owned firms takes an intermediate value, each government wants it to be the government of the other country that privatizes its publicly‐owned firm. In this case, only one government privatizes, and that government obtains lower social welfare and producer surplus than the other.     

Privatization and Strategic Mergers across Borders

We present a theoretical model to capture the role of privatization in the incentives for and implications of cross‐border horizontal mergers. Absent any merger incentives in an autarkic equilibrium, we show that a decrease in the degree of privatization will lower the incentives for diversification of international production. The incentives for diversification for any given degree of privatization will fall when the private and public firms are allowed to move sequentially rather than simultaneously. The presence of the public firm also introduces a new source of asymmetry in the incentives for cross‐border mergers: a reduction in the degree of privatization at home will dampen the potential gains from a take‐over of a home firm by a foreign firm but magnify the potential gains from a take‐over of a foreign firm by a home firm.     

战略贸易政策新进展与发展中国家贸易政策

通过对战略贸易政策在贸易的政治经济学、不确定性、不完全承诺和不完全信息等四个方面的新进展进行讨论,得出结论:新贸易理论的新进展使得脱胎于发达国家的战略贸易政策更加接近发展中国家市场经常失灵的现实,从而对发展中国家的贸易政策有重要的指导意义。     

发展中国家的农业发展问题

发展中国家在获取政治独立以后,普遍都走上了寻求工业化发展的道路。在这一进程中,“工业化就是一切”,农业的发展几乎处于一种被忽视状态,有的国家甚至出现了“重工抑农”、牺牲农业、发展工业的倾向,导致了原本就很落后的农业更加落后。农业的停滞和落后从根本上制约着发展中国家经济的整体发展,阻碍了发展中国家现代化的实现。正如国外有些学者所指出的那样:发展中国家在第二次世界大战后一段时间经济上的糟糕处境是和农业政策的失误分不开的。     

Swidden Agriculture in Developing Countries

Small farmers in many tropical developing countries practice swidden agriculture. A key aspect of swidden agriculture is the time period during which the land is left fallow. This paper uses a new ecological–economic approach to study the fallow period and to determine the optimal length of this period in swidden agriculture. The authors first construct a theoretical model of a parcel of forest land that has been cleared for swidden agriculture. It is then shown how the dynamic and the stochastic properties of this cleared land can be used to derive two objective functions for a small farmer that are ecologically meaningful. Finally, using these two objectives, a probabilistic approach to the determination of the optimal length of the fallow period is discussed. In this approach, the focus of the small farmer is on maintaining the ecological and the economic sustainability of swidden agriculture on the cleared parcel of forest land (CPFL).     

Privatization and the Political Economy of Strategic Trade Policy

This article considers the interdependence between international financial markets, privatization, and strategic trade policies. We describe an economy where portfolio allocations are chosen by risk-averse agents who rationally forecast future trade policies. Assuming a government responsive to the policy preferences of voters, we show that ownership structure affects trade policy through the incentives for lobbying by private agents. Portfolios and trade policy are thus jointly determined in political-economic equilibrium. Privatization of state-owned industry exerts an important influence over the trade policies chosen by domestic and foreign governments by expanding the scope for individual diversification.     

发展中国家普遍服务义务的经济分析

本文构建一个简单的非对称信息模型,分析发展中国家特定的普遍服务问题。在模型中,政府与垄断企业的非对称信息产生于在农村提供服务的边际成本,最优普遍服务政策可以用两种规制手段即资费和网络投资来实现。本文对区别定价和统一定价两种情形进行了对比分析,得出的结论是：在实施区别定价时,与完全信息相比,不完全信息将提高农村地区的资费水平,并且减小相应的网络覆盖面积;而在实施统一定价时,农村地区的定价可能降低,但这是以网络覆盖面积的减小为代价。模型结果还表明,合谋的成胁会弱化企业的激励。有意思的是,在这两种定价机制下,企业和纳税人这两种不同的利益集团均有同规制者合谋的动机。实际上,纳税人利益集团的存在,强化了规制者和企业之间的防止合谋约束,并且为了减少规制者同纳税人利益集团的合谋收益,即使规制者具有高成本信息,也会使配置结果扭曲。     

转型国家的战略集团与国家能力

作者认为国家能力包括实施政治决策的能力和讨价还价能力以及在不同利益群体之间寻求平衡的能力。作者以此出发,分析了中国作为转型国家,私营家这一战略性集团的成长对国家能力的影响。认为私营企业家的成长有利于中国现代化的推进,作为战略群体的私营企业家正式的和非正式的战略行动通过组织方式出现,不仅不会削弱国家能力,反而会增强国家能力。     

Productive Consumption and Growth in Developing Countries

Productive consumption enables the satisfaction of current needs and increases the productive potential of labor. The productive-consumption hypothesis is of fundamental interest because it modifies the "harsh" intertemporal consumption tradeoff traditionally assumed. The incorporation of the productive- consumption hypothesis into a simple endogenous growth model reveals the following implications: (i) the possibility of a poverty-trap; (ii) the rule of optimal consumption turns into a modified Keynes–Ramsey rule; (iii) the (effective) IES is based on, inter alia , the technological opportunities to enhance human capital due to productive consumption; (iv) a rising saving rate; and (v) transitional dynamics to an asymptotic balanced-growth path.     

对西方资本主义国家从国有化到私有化的再认识

西方资本主义国家的国有企业自产生以来，交替出现过数次国有化与私有化运动，尤其是80年代以来的私有化运动更是波澜壮阔、影响空前。这次私有化运动并不是孤立的事件。它是西方资本主义国家国有企业发展史上的一个重要阶段，是80年代以来西方资本主义国家经济改革的重要内容。本文拟将其放入资本主义国家经济发展的大背景中，以求更全面、更准确地把握它产生与发展的规律。     

西方国家民营化改革及其对我国的启示

民营化改革是西方国家20世纪80年代以来行政改革的主要趋势之一。本文从民营化概念的基本内涵入手，在对西方民营化改革原因、条件和特点以及我国的民营化改革实践及其障碍进行深入分析的基础上，探讨了西方民营化改革对于我国的启示。     

国外战略管理研究的新动向

随着科学技术的迅速发展,战略管理的研究也出现了新的趋势。从战略管理理论学派、历史演化、战略选择以及战略管理工具4个方面阐明了国外学者研究的新动向。     

Profit-Sharing and International Capital Mobility in Developing Countries

This paper uses a general equilibrium model incorporating rural–urban migration to analyze and contrast the short- and long-run effects of profit-sharing. Specifically examined are the effects of profit-sharing on rural–urban migration, the degree of competition among urban firms, and international mobility of capital. It is found that although profit-sharing may raise urban employment in the short run, the scheme reduces urban employment and lowers the inflow of foreign capital in the long run.     

Aid and Public Sector Behavior in Developing Countries

This paper analyzes developing-country public-sector fiscal behavior. It is concerned specifically with how aid inflows affect various categories of revenue and expenditure. An econometric model is developed, which differs from those used in previous studies by allowing domestic borrowing to finance both capital and recurrent expenditure. Structural and reduced-form equations are derived and estimated using 1956–95 time-series data for Pakistan. Results indicate that aid is allocated mainly to investment, is positively associated with both investment and consumption expenditure, and has no final impact on taxation.     

Foreign-Investment Tax and Tariff Policies in Developing Countries

In this paper we examine the welfare effects of tax on foreign capital and tariff policies for a small open economy with sectoral unemployment. The individually and jointly optimal tax and tariff rates in the absence or presence of international tax credits are derived. A subsidy on foreign capital coupled with a tariff can be jointly optimal when tax credits are absent in the source country. However, the capital subsidy policy may fail to hold when the foreign country follows a tax credit system.     

Aid, Agriculture and Poverty in Developing Countries

The authors make two contributions to the debate on aid‐effectiveness, illustrating that for impact on poverty what matters is not just the level but also the composition and stability of aid. One specific implication of this for aid policy is that aid most effectively reduces poverty if it supports public (and other) expenditures which are supportive of agricultural development. Regression analysis confirms that these are not only direct expenditure on agriculture, but also on education and infrastructure, and military expenditure has a negative impact. Three factors appear to be particularly conducive to the development of stable pro‐poor expenditure patterns (and in particular pro‐agriculture expenditure patterns). These are expenditure strategies which protect the poor against risk, the development of stable relations between governments and aid donors, and long‐term political commitment to pro‐poor strategies by government. The argument is pursued partly by panel‐data econometric analysis of developing countries as a whole, and partly by case studies of sustained and non‐sustained green revolutions in heavily aid‐dependent countries in Africa.     

Risk and Household Grain Management in Developing Countries

A dynamic model is presented of a household's joint production, storage, and trade decisions when facing transaction costs and risk in prices and yields. Grain management decisions balance the goals of maximising profits and reducing consumption price risk. Model solutions calibrated to Chinese data show that grain's consumption role makes it an attractive form of precautionary saving even when households have access to credit, the joint nature of production and savings decisions limits the income loss associated with risk-coping, and the desire to store grain can explain why subsistence households are frequently net purchasers but rarely net sellers of grain.     

Globalization and Voluntary Environmental Management in Developing Countries

Weak capacity to enforce regulations and sanction violators, and an emphasis on economic growth in developing countries has led to concerns about worsening environmental conditions and the potential for these countries becoming pollution havens for multinational corporations. International environmental standards, voluntary programs, and public disclosure programs have gained popularity because they engage market participants in providing incentives for self-regulation and have the potential to substitute for the lack of domestic regulatory capacity. This paper analyzes the motivations for firms to undertake voluntary environmental management and reviews the empirical evidence on the type of firms participating in such initiatives and their effectiveness in improving environmental performance. We also consider the special case of China that has witnessed dramatic globalization following its acceptance into the World Trade Organization and participation by its firms in global supply chains. We conclude with a discussion of the effectiveness of these efforts as a substitute for weak regulatory and civic society pressures in these countries.