PUBLIC ENTERPRISE IN THE MODERN WESTERN WORLD: AN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to explain the pattern of public enterprise in Western Europe, Japan and the USA in the late 20th century, just before the onset of privatization. This requires an examination of the origins which date from the early 19th century. A common misconception is that public enterprise was a device for overcoming problems of natural monopoly and/or a socialist instrument for mitigating worker exploitation. It is argued that the former was mainly dealt with by arms’ length regulation and that socialist forces were limited. Public enterprise was common in grid networks everywhere and, in manufacturing, more common in Germany, Spain, Italy than elsewhere. Why also were the USA and UK (up to 1939) different and what does the privatization experience tell us about public enterprise? The answer is that public enterprise was often an instrument for promoting social and political unification, securing national defence and related strategic considerations, increasingly in the 20th century for promoting economic growth, with regulatory failures and socialist pressures playing a more subsidiary and/or occasional role.     

ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES OF A PUBLIC ENTERPRISE IN OLIGOPOLY REVISITED: AN EXTENSION TO STACKELBERG COMPETITION

This paper revisits De Fraja and Delbono (1989), which is the seminal paper on mixed oligopoly, in order to pay more attention to Stackelberg competition. First, we show that, even in Cournot competition, if the number of private firms is sufficiently small, privatization necessarily reduces social welfare. Second, we demonstrate that when a public firm is a Stackelberg leader before and after privatization, privatization necessarily reduces welfare irrespective of the number of private firms. Moreover, we show that even when a public firm remains a follower, privatization reduces welfare if the number of private firms is relatively small.     

The ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISE IN BELGIUM

The economic importance of the public enterprises has been established on the basis of the following criteria: Own capital, personnel employed, gross added value and various factors giving rise to appreciation.
This survey is of a purely preliminary nature, since, in actual fact, given the present situation of the published data, it has not so far been possible to arrive at more precise figures, taking enterprise by enterprise according to a systematic plan.
Moreover, it would have been desirable to fill out the above-mentioned criteria by data concerning turnover and investment, As the data collected in the course of this study are so extremely fragmentary, we have been obliged to exclude any statement concerning these two factors.     

PUBLIC ENTERPRISE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: prospects and constraints

ABSTRACT * : The author highlights the problems and prospects of public enterprises within the European Union, as well as the major adjustments considered necessary for these enterprises to fulfil their role. He argues that general criteria determining whether the production of goods and services should be in the public sector cannot be readily established in the European Union, since public supply does not solely depend on the specific economic characteristics of the particular good or service, but also on the prevailing social, cultural and economic conditions in each country, on the economic policy pursued, and on the structural characteristics of its private and public sectors, including entrepreneurial and trade union behaviour.     

西方企业网络理论研究综述

企业网络是全球化、信息化背景下企业组织的最主要形式之一,1980年代以来发展起来的企业网络理论是当代西方经济学的研究热点之一,正以一种全新的范式改变着企业理论的研究视野。在综合西方学者企业网络理论研究的基础上,从激进学派、新经济社会学派、新政治经济学派和新制度经济学派等四个视角对企业网络形成机制进行梳理。以价值链、关系、权力、制度为主要维度,对弹性生产、新竞争、嵌入、社会网络、制度厚实等内容进行了分析,最后在此基础上指出企业网络研究应该注重物质和社会制度层面的整合。