This book provides a detailed microeconomic analysis of the impact of various privatizations in different countries in the region. Its central message is that in many cases, contrary to popular belief, society as a whole and in particular the poor have benefited from privatization. The book presents a careful analysis of the various mechanisms through which privatization has an impact on welfare, an analysis that by and large has been missing from the debate. Case studies of water sector privatization in Argentina and Colombia, and also the telecom industry in Peru are included.
Are resources allocated more efficiently through private ownership than through the public sector? The experiences of eleven newly privatised companies are examined to evaluate this hypothesis. With the Government's pro-privatization policies in place for over a decade, this is a prime time to evaluate theory versus reality.
The book the American Prospect calls “an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern,” by America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian “An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons.” —Naomi Klein A sweeping exposé of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, the hardcover edition of The Privatization of Everything elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains,” Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it “a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book,” and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a “persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best.” From Diane Ravitch (“an important new book about the dangers of privatization”) to Heather McGhee (“a well-researched call to action”), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can—and are—wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code. “Enlightening and sobering” (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls “a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship.”
Over the past decade economic policy in the UK and elsewhere has been guided by the belief that resources are used more efficiently in the private sector than under state ownership. Consequently, many formerly state-owned companies have been transferred to the private sector. After surveying the theoretical arguments for and against this hypothesis, this book examines the experience of eleven firms, including British Airways, Rolls-Royce and British Telecom. Various indicators are used to measure each firm's performance before and after privatisation to assess whether this policy has brought about improvements in efficiency. The first four chapters provide background material for the empirical work that follows. Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical arguments for and against the idea that private ownership will be more efficient than state control. Chapter 2 provides brief histories of the eleven organisations studied and chapter 3 discusses how their performance can be measured. Chapter 4 reviews the literature on the relative efficiency of public and private ownership. Chapter 5 considers the impact of privatisation on each of the eleven firms' labour and total factor productivity growth. Chapter 6 performs a similar analysis using two standard accounting ratios (value-added and the rate of profit). Chapter 7 assesses the impact of privatisation on technical efficiency using data envelopment analysis. In chapter 8 the impact of ownership on employment, wage levels and the distribution of business income is considered. The penultimate chapter discusses the restructuring that has followed each company's move into the private sector, and the final chapter summarises the results.
Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called "a state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just.
Infrastructure plays a key role in fostering growth and productivity and has been linked to improved earnings, health, and education levels for the poor. Yet Latin America and the Caribbean are currently faced with a dangerous combination of relatively low public and private infrastructure investment. Those investment levels must increase, and it can be done. If Latin American and Caribbean governments are to increase infrastructure investment in politically feasible ways, it is critical that they learn from experience and have an accurate idea of future impacts. This book contributes to this aim by producing what is arguably the most comprehensive privatization impact analysis in the region to date, drawing on an extremely comprehensive dataset.
Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.
Education policymakers often demonstrate surprisingly little awareness of how popular reforms impact teaching and teacher education. In this book, well-regarded scholars help readers develop a more robust understanding of the nature of teacher preparation, as well as an in-depth grasp of how popular policies, practices, and ideologies have taken root domestically and internationally. Contributors include Deron Boyles, Anthony Cody, Kerry Kretchmar, Carmen Montecinos, Beth Sondel, and Christopher Tienken. “This book will help readers consider the possibilities of democratic visions in the teaching profession and in public education, particularly in this time of intense political polarization when critical citizen engagement with our public institutions and policies is deeply needed.” —Janelle Scott, University of California, Berkeley “The chapters in this book make clear that ongoing policy disconnects cannot be ignored and that now is the time to elevate the teaching profession for students who have faced historical inequities.” —Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean, University of Kentucky College of Education “Public teaching and teacher education in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world are under assault by concerted efforts to deregulate and marketize them. This collection of essays examines the consequences of these privatization efforts in the U.S., Chile, and Singapore and should be required reading for those wanting to understand their complexity and consequences for teaching and teacher education today.” —Ken Zeichner, Boeing Professor of Teacher Education, University of Washington
Privatization has been one of the most important elements of public policy in the last decade and there have been massive transfers of ownership from the public to the private sector on a national and international level. This book combines thematic papers with country case studies to discuss the mechanisms which have enabled this to occur, and to assess privatization's mixed achievements. The authors, international academics, practitioners and consultants and the process of privatization is discussed in East Germany, Nigeria, Pakistan, Guyana, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, and Great Britain.
