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23 results

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  • The Political Economy of Privatisation
  • Bob Rowthorn, Ha-Joon Chang
  • Journal: The Economic and Labour Relations Review / Volume 3 / Issue 2 / December 1992
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2023, pp. 1-17
  • View abstract

    This paper examines some of the main arguments relating to the effect of privatisation on efficiency. It is concerned with both narrow economic issues and wider political issues. After a critical examination of some theories, which assert that private ownership is intrinsically more efficient than public ownership, it is argued that for large scale enterprise there are no strong economic reasons for believing in the superiority of private enterprise. As long as the government in question has the will and the power to make a public enterprise function in a socially efficient fashion, the public enterprise may be just as efficient as private enterprise whilst offering additional economic and social advantages.

  • 2 - Reindustrialising the UK
  • Edited by Sue Konzelmann, Susan Himmelweit, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Jeremy Smith, John Weeks
  • Book: Rethinking Britain
  • Published by: Bristol University Press
  • Published online: 11 March 2021
  • Print publication: 19 September 2019, pp 65-69
  • View extract

    Summary

    What's the issue?

    The UK economy is at a crossroads. Following on from the dramatic deindustrialisation that began in the 1970s, and the increasing loss of global industrial competitiveness from the late 1990s, today's UK industrial sector is a pale shadow of its former self. Since the global financial crisis, all governments have recognised the need for an industrial strategy to rebalance the UK economy (both sectorally and regionally), improve its productivity, and enable it to reap the benefits of the green technology transition and the digital industrial revolution.

    In 2017, the Conservative government launched a new industrial strategy and, after several months, an Industrial Strategy Council was set up, chaired by Andy Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England.

    Given the UK's modest track record in industrial strategy, and the mounting challenge of reindustrialising the economy in the face of intense international competition, the extent to which the latest strategy is up to the challenge has been widely questioned.

    What then, should the key elements of a more convincing approach actually be?

    Analysis

    Since 1998, the UK has experienced a fall in its global share of all major manufacturing industries. This loss has been only partially compensated by growth in the business services sectors. These, of course, were also badly hit by the financial crisis (see Figures 4 and 5 below) and the impact of Brexit remains unclear. Deindustrialisation has also brought a drop in productivity – especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and service companies. Meanwhile, ‘financialisation’ – the increasing pressure on manufacturing companies to deliver higher short-term profits for shareholders – has also meant that R&D (research and development) and fixed capital investments have been slashed. All this has resulted in the polarisation and disarticulation of the UK's industrial ecosystem; combined with a decade of austerity, this has also had a dramatic – and negative – impact on the fortunes of communities and regions that rely on manufacturing.

    In response to this, as well as mounting competition from both low-cost economies at one end of the market (such as China) and high-tech economies at the other (like the US, Germany, Japan and Korea), the UK government has at last rediscovered the need for an industrial strategy.

  • Institutions and economic development: theory, policy and history
  • HA-JOON CHANG
  • Journal: Journal of Institutional Economics / Volume 7 / Issue 4 / December 2011
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2010, pp. 473-498
    • Article
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  • View abstract

    The article tries to advance our understanding of institutional economics by critically examining the currently dominant discourse on institutions and economic development. First, I argue that the discourse suffers from a number of theoretical problems – its neglect of the causality running from development to institutions, its inability to see the impossibility of a free market, and its belief that the freest market and the strongest protection of private property rights are best for economic development. Second, I point out that the supposed evidence showing the superiority of ‘liberalized’ institutions relies too much on cross-section econometric studies, which suffer from defective concepts, flawed measurements and heterogeneous samples. Finally, I argue that the currently dominant discourse on institutions and development has a poor understanding of changes in institutions themselves, which often makes it take unduly optimistic or pessimistic positions about the feasibility of institutional reform.

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