Reality Check: The Distributional Impact of Privatization in Developing Countries

Throughout the 1990s, privatization of inefficient state-owned enterprises was strongly embraced in developing and transitional economies. Little attention has gone to the distributional implications of the privatization movement, a particularly surprising oversight given the current backlash in many settings against further privatization. This book offers a comprehensive set of country-specific studies on the effects of privatization on people winners and losers in different income, employment, and education groups. The studies analyze the changes in public tax revenue from privatized enterprises, shifts in pension and other liabilities, and changes in income of different groups.
Contributors include David McKenzie (Stanford University), Dilip Mookherjee (Boston University), Gover Barja (Universidad Catlica Boliviana, La Paz), Miguel Urquiola (Columbia University), Samuel Freije (Universidad de Las Américas in Puebla, Mexico), Luis A. Rivas (Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Nicaragua), Mximo Torero, Enrique Schroth, and Alberto Pasco Font (Group of Analysis for Development [GRADE], Lima), Roberto Macedo (University of So Paulo, Presbyterian Mackenzie University, and Foundation Institute of Economic Research, So Paolo), Antonio Estache (World Bank), Michael Bleyzer and Edi Segura (SigmaBleyzer Corporation), Gary H. Jefferson, (Brandeis University), Su Jian (Brandeis and Peking Universities), Jiang Yuan and Yu Xinhua (National Bureau of Statistics, Beijing), and Malathy Knight-John and P.P.A. Wasantha (Institute of Policy Studies, Sri Lanka).

John Nellis is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Nancy Birdsall is the founding president of the Center for Global Development. Prior to launching the center, Birdsall was senior associate and director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall was executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank.