IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbiwp/0950.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Performance Differential Between Private and State-Owned Enterprises: An Analysis of Profitability and Leverage

Author

Listed:
  • Phi, Nguyet Thi Minh

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Tu, Chuc Anh

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Yoshino, Naoyuki

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Kim, Chul Ju

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

Abstract

We investigate empirically the relationship between ownership identity and the performance of firms in terms of profitability and solvency. Using cross-sectional data covering over 25,000 firms worldwide and by employing various empirical methods, we find robust support for the inferior performance of government enterprises over privately owned firms. Specifically, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) tend to be less profitable than privately owned enterprises. However, they appear to be more dependent on debt for their financial needs and are, thus, better leveraged. Additionally, SOEs are more labor intensive and have higher labor costs. Thus, evidence from this study could be interpreted to mean that privatization could improve the performance of public firms. However, a study over a longer period is needed before these results can be considered conclusive.

Suggested Citation

  • Phi, Nguyet Thi Minh & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad & Tu, Chuc Anh & Yoshino, Naoyuki & Kim, Chul Ju, 2019. "Performance Differential Between Private and State-Owned Enterprises: An Analysis of Profitability and Leverage," ADBI Working Papers 950, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0950
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/503476/adbi-wp950.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer, 1998. "State versus Private Ownership," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 133-150, Fall.
    2. McCormick, Robert E & Meiners, Roger E, 1988. "University Governance: A Property Rights Perspective," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 423-442, October.
    3. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    4. Krueger, Anne O, 1990. "Government Failures in Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 9-23, Summer.
    5. Boardman, Anthony E & Vining, Aidan R, 1989. "Ownership and Performance in Competitive Environments: A Comparison of the Performance of Private, Mixed, and State-Owned Enterprises," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 1-33, April.
    6. Simeon Djankov & Peter Murrell, 2002. "Enterprise Restructuring in Transition: A Quantitative Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(3), pages 739-792, September.
    7. Xu, Gang & Yano, Go, 2017. "How does anti-corruption affect corporate innovation? Evidence from recent anti-corruption efforts in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 498-519.
    8. Attiat F. Ott & Keith Hartley (ed.), 1991. "Privatization And Economic Efficiency," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 345, March.
    9. Kole, Stacey R & Mulherin, J Harold, 1997. "The Government as a Shareholder: A Case from the United States," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(1), pages 1-22, April.
    10. Przemyslaw Kowalski & Max Büge & Monika Sztajerowska & Matias Egeland, 2013. "State-Owned Enterprises: Trade Effects and Policy Implications," OECD Trade Policy Papers 147, OECD Publishing.
    11. Qian Sun & Wilson H. S. Tong & Jing Tong, 2002. "How Does Government Ownership Affect Firm Performance? Evidence from China's Privatization Experience," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1&2), pages 1-27.
    12. Paul H. Malatesta & Kathryn L. DeWenter, 2001. "State-Owned and Privately Owned Firms: An Empirical Analysis of Profitability, Leverage, and Labor Intensity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 320-334, March.
    13. Megginson, William L & Nash, Robert C & van Randenborgh, Matthias, 1994. "The Financial and Operating Performance of Newly Privatized Firms: An International Empirical Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(2), pages 403-452, June.
    14. Mason, Geoff & O'Leary, Brigid & Vecchi, Michela, 2012. "Certified and uncertified skills and productivity growth performance: Cross-country evidence at industry level," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 351-360.
    15. Nandini Gupta, 2005. "Partial Privatization and Firm Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 987-1015, April.
    16. Poczter, Sharon, 2016. "The long-term effects of bank recapitalization: Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 131-153.
    17. Paul A. Grout & Margaret Stevens, 2003. "The Assessment: Financing and Managing Public Services," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(2), pages 215-234, Summer.
    18. Mohammed Omran, 2008. "The Performance of State-Owned Enterprises and Newly Privatized Firms: Does Privatization Really Matter?," Chapters, in: José María Fanelli & Lyn Squire (ed.), Economic Reform in Developing Countries, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Julio O de Castro & Klaus Uhlenbruck, 1997. "Characteristics of Privatization: Evidence from Developed, Less-Developed and Former Communist Countries," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 28(1), pages 123-143, March.
    20. Qian Sun & Wilson H. S. Tong & Jing Tong, 2002. "How Does Government Ownership Affect Firm Performance? Evidence from China’s Privatization Experience," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1‐2), pages 1-27.
    21. 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.
    22. Truong Dong Loc & Ger Lanjouw & Robert Lensink, 2006. "The impact of privatization on firm performance in a transition economy: The case of Vietnam," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 14(2), pages 349-389, April.
    23. Boycko, Maxim & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1996. "A Theory of Privatisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(435), pages 309-319, March.
    24. John Vickers & George Yarrow, 1991. "Economic Perspectives on Privatization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 111-132, Spring.
    25. Eskil Goldeng & Leo A. Grünfeld & Gabriel R. G. Benito, 2008. "The Performance Differential between Private and State Owned Enterprises: The Roles of Ownership, Management and Market Structure," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(7), pages 1244-1273, November.
    26. Aivazian, Varouj A. & Ge, Ying & Qiu, Jiaping, 2005. "Can corporatization improve the performance of state-owned enterprises even without privatization?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 791-808, October.
    27. 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.
    28. Mbako Mbo & Charles Adjasi, 2017. "Performance of SOEs: evidence on Botswana Telecommunications Corporation," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(7), pages 960-979, July.
    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. Keun Jung Lee, 2021. "The Effects of Privatization and Corporate Governance of SOEs in Transition Economies: The Case of Kazakhstan," ADB Institute Series on Development Economics, in: Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary & Naoyuki Yoshino & Chul Ju Kim & Kunmin Kim (ed.), Reforming State-Owned Enterprises in Asia, chapter 0, pages 113-132, Springer.
    2. Wang, Hua & Liao, Lingtao & Wu, Ji (George), 2023. "Robot adoption and firm's capacity utilization: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Sanchez Navarro,Dennis, 2024. "What Happens When the State Is Bossing around Markets ? An Analysis of the Performance Differentials between Businesses of the State (BOS) and Private-Owned Enterprises (POEs)," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10820, The World Bank.

    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. Beuselinck, Christof & Cao, Lihong & Deloof, Marc & Xia, Xinping, 2017. "The value of government ownership during the global financial crisis," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 481-493.
    2. Henk Berkman & Rebel A. Cole & Lawrence J. Fu, 2014. "Improving corporate governance where the State is the controlling block holder: evidence from China," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(7-9), pages 752-777, September.
    3. Liu Wang & William Judge, 2012. "Managerial ownership and the role of privatization in transition economies: The case of China," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 479-498, June.
    4. Chen, Gongmeng & Firth, Michael & Rui, Oliver, 2006. "Have China's enterprise reforms led to improved efficiency and profitability?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 82-109, March.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/3860 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Gong, Stephen X.H. & Cullinane, Kevin & Firth, Michael, 2012. "The impact of airport and seaport privatization on efficiency and performance: A review of the international evidence and implications for developing countries," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 37-47.
    7. 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.
    8. Mohammed Omran, 2008. "The Performance of State-Owned Enterprises and Newly Privatized Firms: Does Privatization Really Matter?," Chapters, in: José María Fanelli & Lyn Squire (ed.), Economic Reform in Developing Countries, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Fabio Monteduro, 2014. "Public–private versus public ownership and economic performance: evidence from Italian local utilities," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 18(1), pages 29-49, February.
    10. Mike W. Peng & Garry D. Bruton & Ciprian V. Stan & Yuanyuan Huang, 2016. "Theories of the (state-owned) firm," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 293-317, June.
    11. Andersson, Fredrik N.G. & Opper, Sonja & Khalid, Usman, 2018. "Are capitalists green? Firm ownership and provincial CO2 emissions in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 349-359.
    12. Filippo Belloc, 2014. "Innovation in State-Owned Enterprises: Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(3), pages 821-848.
    13. 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.
    14. Zhang, Yufei & Liu, Deqiang, 2024. "China's mixed-ownership reform and SOE profitability," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 496-520.
    15. repec:hur:ijaraf:v:4:y:2014:i:2:p:98-108 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Alberto Chong & Florencio de, 2003. "The Truth about Privatization in Latin America," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm436, Yale School of Management.
    17. Bogart, Dan & Chaudhary, Latika, 2015. "Off the rails: Is state ownership bad for productivity?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 997-1013.
    18. Bruno Merlevede & Pablo Muylle, 2025. "State-Owned Enterprises in Europe - Firm Performance and Aggregate Effects," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 25/1105, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    19. Stefan Buehler & Simon Wey, 2014. "When Do State-Owned Firms Crowd Out Private Investment?," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 319-330, September.
    20. 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.
    21. Boardman, Anthony E. & Vining, Aidan R. & Weimer, David L., 2016. "The long-run effects of privatization on productivity: Evidence from Canada," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1001-1017.
    22. Claudia Curi & Justas Gedvilas & Ana Lozano-Vivas, 2016. "Corporate Governance of SOEs and performance in transition countries. Evidence from Lithuania," BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series BEMPS36, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    performance; ownership; solvency; state-owned enterprises; private-owned enterprises;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ris:adbiwp:0950. 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: ADB Institute (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/adbinjp.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.