ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 examines the privatization and restructuring of enterprises. Initial conditions and actual measures implemented by privatized companies vary from country to country. Furthermore, because many different kinds of individuals and organization ended up acquiring state-owned firms, the earlier literature on this topic has demonstrated mixed findings. To grasp the overall picture of this research field, this chapter performs a large meta-analysis of the relationship between post-privatization ownership and firm performance. The baseline estimation of a meta-regression model that employed a total of 2,894 estimates drawn from 121 previous studies indicated the superior impact of foreign ownership on firm performance as compared with state and domestic private entities. However, it did not go so far as to comprehensively verify the series of hypotheses concerning the interrelationship between different ownership types. The estimation of an extended meta-regression model that explicitly controls for the idiosyncrasies of transition economies and privatization policies strongly suggested that differences between countries in terms of location, privatization method, and policy implementation speed are causes of the opaqueness seen in the empirical results of the earlier literature. The definite evidence of the harmfulness of voucher privatization for ex-post firm performance is one of the most noteworthy empirical findings obtained from the meta-analysis in this chapter.
