The Boston Area Public Enterprise Group (BAPEG) is a multidisciplinary group of scholars dedicated to understanding the public enterprises operating in the world's mixed economies. The first BAPEG conference focused on public enterprises in industrialized nations and resulted in the publication of State-Owned Enterprises in the Western Economies, edited by Yair Aharoni and Raymond Vernon. The second BAPEG Conference in April 1980 concentrated on public enterprises in less-developed countries with mixed economies. Some 70 papers were prepared for the conference, of which 29 were selected for discussion. The selections in this volume were chosen from the larger group to illustrate the range of issues addressed by the assembly.

The conference was attended by 68 scholars, government officials, and public-enterprise executives from 19 countries in South Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe, and North America. We would like to thank all the participants, whose lively comments contributed to the revised selections that appear here. We would also like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, U.S. State Department, and Fund for Multinational Management Education, whose financial support made the conference possible. We are similarly indebted to Leita Kaldi of the Harvard Institute for International Development and to Susan Weise of the Boston University Public Enterprise Program, who served as energetic and capable administrative coordinators.