Measuring Privatization: Comparing Five Indicators of the Disposition of State-Owned Enterprises in Advanced Democracies

Political Determinants of Privatisation Reforms: A Comparative Analysis in Europe

“…It would be interesting to refine our findings through further analyses: (1) replicating the results for other privatisation indicators on public ownership or turnover (Son and Zohlnhöfer, 2019), (2) taking into account the sector affected and the method of privatisation and (3) controlling the regulatory environment (Boubakri et al, 2009) and also the constitutional barriers, since they may impede privatisation reforms (Schmitt and Obinger, 2011). Future research could consider the conditions of the current political environment, for example, the future changes within the EU, the consequences of Brexit and the collateral effects of important political and social issues, such as migration waves.…”

“…Information about privatisation processes was obtained from the Privatisation Barometer website, 3 which is the most representative privatisation data, used by the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF (Son and Zohlnhöfer, 2019). The Privatisation Barometer was launched in 2003 by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), which is a non-profit, non-partisan research institution.…”

“…Numerous indicators have been put forward to represent privatisation; while technically and conceptually all indicators seem to be reliable, they represent different aspects of the phenomenon (Son and Zohlnhöfer, 2019). This article uses the ‘material’ approach of Obinger et al (2016), referring to privatisation as the transfer of ownership or voting rights from the state to the private sector.…”

“…This article uses the ‘material’ approach of Obinger et al (2016), referring to privatisation as the transfer of ownership or voting rights from the state to the private sector. Accordingly, we use data about privatisation from the Privatisation Barometer website, which has become the most representative privatisation data, beyond data from the OECD data set (Son and Zohlnhöfer, 2019), which stopped producing indicators on privatisation from 2001.…”

“…REST database); however, we found that they have some shortcomings: the former focuses on non-manufacturing sectors, while we are interested in considering all activity sectors. The latter considers not only the ‘material’ definition of privatisation but also the legal transformation from departmental agency to public corporation or from public corporation to SOEs (Son and Zohlnhöfer, 2019).…”