Why Do Governments Divest?

• 1 Introduction.- 2 Economic Growth and Efficiency.- 2.1 Growth theories and empirical growth studies.- 2.2 The impact of privatization on output.- 2.3 Social security and privatization.- 2.4 Summary.- 3 The Politics of Privatization.- 3.1 Political-economy theories of macroeconomic policymaking.- 3.2 Government behavior and privatization.- 3.3 Summary.- 4 Fiscal Considerations of Privatization.- 4.1 The intertemporal budget constraint.- 4.2 Ricardian equivalence.- 4.3 The one period budget constraint.- 4.4 Fiscal motives of large industrialized economies: privatization in Germany and EMU.- 4.5 Summary.- 5 Macroeconomic Considerations of Privatization.- 5.1 Monetary aggregates and inflation.- 5.2 Balance-of-payments crises.- 5.3 Employment considerations of privatization.- 5.4 Political considerations and retrenchment benefits: the case of Pakistan.- 5.5 Summary.- 6 Modeling the Effects of Privatization.- 6.1 Outline of the framework.- 6.2 Baseline scenario.- 6.3 Privatization scenarios.- 6.4 Summary.- 6.5 Appendix.- 7 Coming Full Circle: The Case of Jamaica.- 7.1 Background.- 7.2 The role of the government and Jamaica’s growth puzzle.- 7.3 Jamaica’s political system and half-hearted reforms.- 7.4 Summary.- 8 Summary and Conclusion.- References.

From the reviews of the first edition: "The policy of privatization - selling state-owned firms to the private sector - has grown from its relatively modest roots in Mrs. Thatcher's Britain during the 1980s to be a world-scale phenomenon. ... This is the theme of Schipke's short, tightly focused and very useful book. ... In fact, Schipke has carved out an interesting and under-researched niche - the macroeconomics of privatization. ... The book is well written and ... well edited and produced." (Journal of Economics, Vol. 77 (3), 2002)