The Economics of Privatisation and Corporate Governance

Corporate governance systems are receiving remarkable attention in the economics literature. The significance of corporate governance is now widely recognised both for national development and as part of the international financial architecture. The aim of the work is to study privatisation, efficiency and corporate governance in homogeneous way. The stream of interest in corporate governance is converging with increasing interest in associated issues of competitiveness, corporate citizenship, and social and environmental responsibility. As the process of privatisation accelerated, the concern for corporate governance grew as it became increasingly apparent that in many countries state enterprises were being privatised into what has been described as a post-privatisation policy. Some issues related to privatisation and corporate governance are of microeconomic nature (related to the economic efficiency, to the reward strategy and to the incentive scheme of a single firms). This work makes a contribution to the knowledge of these issues, providing where possible, some empirical evidence built with the use of parametric (Stochastic Frontier analysis) and non-parametric (Data Envelopment analysis) tools. A review of the international experience on the field is also provided with some directions to build a taxonomy on corporate governance.