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State-owned enterprises in developing countries are often inefficient, and the resulting losses to the economy hinder growth. This book draws on extensive data and detailed case studies to show how divestiture and other reforms can improve economic performance, why politics often impedes reform, and how reforming countries have overcome these obstacles. To demonstrate why some countries succeed in reform and some do not, the book compares policies for state-owned enterprises in twelve countries. Successful countries have made the most of divestiture, competition, hard budgets, and financial sector reforms. And all twelve countries have tried to change the relationship between the government and state-owned firms through the use of contracts. The book documents the importance of three types of contracts for reform: performance contracts (between the government and public managers), management contracts (between the government and the private managers of a government firm), and regulatory contracts (between a government and the owners of a privatized, regulated monopoly). (DÜI-Hff)

AbstractDavid Skarbek argues that qualitative research methods can analyze institutions by exploiting complex evidence not accessible through quantitative methods. He suggests that well-done case studies and process tracing can meet some of the same tests of inference as statistical methods. Although Skarbek's critique and proposals mirror those of many other authors, including Ronald Coase, he nonetheless makes an important contribution. The brief, cogent, and instructive way he presents his advice and his defense of qualitative methods as a complement to mainstream methods rather than a confrontation, may be more persuasive than more confrontational arguments. As 'datafication' is quickly turning qualitative observations into quantitative data analyzed through machine learning, Skarbek's excellent advice on how to understand what is happening under different institutional settings could not be timelier.

Abstract:In his article on measuring institutions, Stephan Voigt (2012) proposes a pragmatic approach to develop more concrete, objective institutional variables than the broad abstractions used in most cross-country growth regressions. Voigt's approach has important strengths, but cross-country growth regressions, even with precisely measured institutions, are less likely to yield new insights than other methodologies.

Abstract:Should scholars, like columnists, exaggerate and aggregate opposing views into men of straw? I analyse an example of scholarly criticism that characterizes the treatment of development in institutional economics as a simplistic and extremist paradigm. I argue that scholarly standards demand a complete and honest portrayal of contrary opinions and that straw men should be banished from scholarly discourse.

Seventy percent of Latin Americans polled in a 2003 survey said they thought that the privatization of state-owned firms had not been good for their counties. For sector reform, including privatization, to have a future in Latin America, reformers will need to understand the sources of dissatisfaction & how -- if at all -- they can be dealt with. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.