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Journal Article
Examining social security privatization in Latin America
Working Paper
Social security privatization: what it can and cannot accomplish
This paper assesses the effect of social security privatization on the government budget, economic efficiency, national savings, and the distribution of resources across generations. It is shown that the benefits of privatization most often touted by privatization advocates can be achieved by simply altering taxes and social security pensions and leaving the basic structure of social security unchanged. In the conclusion, two simple arguments are given for why privatization might be a good idea nonetheless.
Working Paper
Political and economic consequences of alternative privatization strategies
The different approaches to large-scale privatization in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic imply somewhat different patterns of corporate governance--that is, ownership, monitoring, and control of firms. Corporate governance affects economic incentives within the firm, and therefore economic performance of the firm. Similarly, patterns of ownership implied by the programs affect the distribution of gains from reform. Privatizing the large enterprises will importantly influence resource allocation, employment, and output. Consequently, the patterns of corporate governance embodied in the ...
Journal Article
Social Security and Medicare: no free lunch
Conference Paper
It's High Time to Privatize: Panel Discussion
Report
Privatization's impact on private productivity: the case of Brazilian iron ore
A major motivation for the wave of privatizations of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the last twenty years was a belief that privatization would increase economic efficiency. There are now many studies showing most privatizations achieved this goal. Our theme is that the productivity gains from privatization are much more general and widespread than has typically been recognized in this literature. In assessing the productivity gains from privatization, the literature has only examined the productivity gains accruing at the privatized SOEs. But privatization may have significant impact on ...
Working Paper
The effects of social security privatization on household saving: evidence from the Chilean experience
In recent years, a handful of countries have converted the financing of their social security systems from pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) to partial or full funding. Privatization is viewed as one way to insulate social security from the political and demographic pressures that currently threaten the financial stability of PAYGO systems. However, privatization would improve a nation's situation only if such a reform increases domestic saving. In this paper I use evidence from Chile, where social security was privatized in 1981, to assess the impact of such a reform on household saving rates. I find ...
Journal Article
Postal savings in Japan and mortgage markets in the U.S.
Financial system redesign has become high political drama in Japan. In August, 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi's plan to privatize Japan's huge postal savings and life insurance system (PSS) was defeated in the Lower House of the Diet. Koizumi then retaliated by dissolving the Lower House and calling a "snap" election for September 11, 2005 in hopes of getting members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) more supportive of his program into the legislature. This was essentially a showdown?an open confrontation between the "new" and the "old" LDP in an effort by Koizumi to reduce the ...
Journal Article
Privatization and the transition to a market economy
The Chinese government has announced its intention to privatize thousands of state-owned enterprises. Such an effort would dwarf recent privatizations in the industrialized West and be comparable only to the Eastern European experience following the fall of the Soviet Union. As such, an examination of the Eastern European privatization may provide valuable lessons for China and any other developing economy that embarks upon a large-scale privatization program. In this article, Jason Saving considers three problems with which Eastern European privatizations have had to contend: a scarcity of ...
Report
The literature on privatization
The privatization literature focuses on three related areas: productive efficiency, the government budget, and privatization techniques. Where competitive product and capital markets exist, privatization is likely to improve productive efficiency. Such improvement makes possible fiscal gains, which may also be derived from reductions in government largess. These conclusions are weakly supported by an empirical literature that is often plagued by ambiguous results. The techniques literature provides policy guidelines for achieving the maximum benefits from privatization under a variety of ...