IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecq/wpaper/2222.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Selling family silver to pay the grocers bill? The case of privatization in India

Author

Listed:
  • Nandini Gupta

Abstract

Using data on Indian government-owned firms, we investigate the effect of privatization on the performance of these firms. Our results suggest that privatization is positively associated with the profitability and efficiency of of government-owned firms. Despite the small number of transactions, selling majority equity stakes to private owners has an economically significant impact on firm performance. Moreover, privatization is not associated with layoffs or a decline in employee compensation. These results are robust to controlling for the observable and unobservable characteristics of firms selected for privatization, and industry and country level reforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Nandini Gupta, 2010. "Selling family silver to pay the grocers bill? The case of privatization in India," Working Papers 2222, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, revised Oct 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecq:wpaper:2222
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://indianeconomy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/working_papers/wp_2010-2_v2.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2010
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    2. Roman Frydman & Cheryl Gray & Marek Hessel & Andrzej Rapaczynski, 1999. "When Does Privatization Work? The Impact of Private Ownership on Corporate Performance in the Transition Economies," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1153-1191.
    3. Nandini Gupta, 2005. "Partial Privatization and Firm Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 987-1015, April.
    4. Jones, Steven L. & Megginson, William L. & Nash, Robert C. & Netter, Jeffry M., 1999. "Share issue privatizations as financial means to political and economic ends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 217-253, August.
    5. Clarke, George R G & Cull, Robert, 2002. "Political and Economic Determinants of the Likelihood of Privatizing Argentine Public Banks," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(1), pages 165-197, April.
    6. Bernardo Bortolotti & Paolo Pinotti, 2008. "Delayed privatization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 331-351, September.
    7. Megginson, William Leon, 2005. "The Financial Economics of Privatization," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195150629.
    8. Sadiq Ahmed & Ashutosh Varshney, 2008. "Battles Half Won," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 28048, December.
    9. Gupta, Nandini & Ham, Jhon C. & Svejnar, Jan, 2008. "Priorities and sequencing in privatization: Evidence from Czech firm panel data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 183-208, February.
    10. Jeffry M. Netter & William L. Megginson, 2001. "From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 321-389, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jain, Ritika, 2017. "Public sector enterprise disinvestment in India: Efficiency gains in a political context," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 18-36.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boubakri, Narjess & Cosset, Jean-Claude & Saffar, Walid, 2017. "The constraints on full privatization: International evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 392-407.
    2. Saul Estrin & Jan Hanousek & Evzen Kocenda & Jan Svejnar, 2009. "The Effects of Privatization and Ownership in Transition Economies," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 699-728, September.
    3. Boubakri, Narjess & Cosset, Jean-Claude & Guedhami, Omrane & Saffar, Walid, 2011. "The political economy of residual state ownership in privatized firms: Evidence from emerging markets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 244-258, April.
    4. Christian Wolf & Michael G. Pollitt, 2009. "The Welfare Implications of Oil Privatisation: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Norway's Statoil," Working Papers EPRG 0905, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    5. Jun Du & Xiaoxuan Liu, 2015. "Selection, Staging and Sequencing in the Recent Chinese Privatization," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3).
    6. Boubakri, Narjess & Cosset, Jean-Claude & Saffar, Walid, 2008. "Political connections of newly privatized firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 654-673, December.
    7. Chen, Ruiyuan & El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Wang, He, 2017. "Do state and foreign ownership affect investment efficiency? Evidence from privatizations," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 408-421.
    8. Dastidar, Siddhartha G. & Fisman, Raymond & Khanna, Tarun, 2008. "Testing limits to policy reversal: Evidence from Indian privatizations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 513-526, September.
    9. Svejnar, Jan & Hagemejer, Jan & Tyrowicz, Joanna, 2018. "Are Rushed Privatizations Substandard? Analyzing Firm-level Privatization under Fiscal Pressure," CEPR Discussion Papers 12991, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Ádám Szentpéteri & Álmos Telegdy, 2010. "Political Selection Of Firms Into Privatization Programs. Evidence From Romanian Comprehensive Data," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 298-328, November.
    11. Laura Cabeza García & Silvia Gómez Ansón, 2012. "What Drives the Operating Performance of Privatised Firms?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 59(1), pages 1-27, February.
    12. Christian Wolf & Michael G. Pollitt, 2008. "Privatising national oil companies: Assessing the impact on firm performance," Working Papers EPRG 0805, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    13. Mathur, Ike & Banchuenvijit, Wanrapee, 2007. "The effects of privatization on the performance of newly privatized firms in emerging markets," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 134-146, May.
    14. Ben-Nasr, Hamdi, 2016. "Labor protection and government control: Evidence from privatized firms," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 485-498.
    15. repec:hur:ijaraf:v:4:y:2014:i:2:p:98-108 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Pan, Xia & Cheng, Wenyin & Gao, Yuning, 2022. "The impact of privatization of state-owned enterprises on innovation in China: A tale of privatization degree," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    17. Megginson, William L., 2005. "The economics of bank privatization," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(8-9), pages 1931-1980, August.
    18. Borisova, Ginka & Cowan, Arnold R., 2014. "Government asset sales, economic nationalism, and acquirer wealth effects," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 351-368.
    19. Brown, David J. & Earle, John S. & Telegdy, Almos, 2016. "Where does privatization work? Understanding the heterogeneity in estimated firm performance effects," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 329-362.
    20. Liu, Yi & Li, Xue & Lahiri, Sajal, 2016. "Determinants of privatization in China: The role of the presence of foreign firms," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 196-221.
    21. Rim Ben Hassen & Omri Abdelwahed, 2014. "Privatization of Tunisian Companies: A Study of Corporate Governance Mechanisms," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 4(2), pages 94-104, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecq:wpaper:2222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ursula Schwarzhaupt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/siclbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.