A World Bank Policy Research Report

Bureaucrats in Business:
The Economics and Politics of Government Ownership.

This report examines the economic problems that arise when governments own and operate enterprises that could be managed by the private sector. It draws on a rich database and detailed country case studies to provide the most comprehensive assessment yet of a decade of divestiture and reform of state-owned enterprises. It evaluates the experiences of 12 countries, some of which have reformed successfully, and some which did not.

The Report Team has made the broad database available to interested parties accessing this site. The database provides time series data on key variables describing state-owned enterprise sectors (e.g. value added, investment, employment, debt) for approximately 40 countries for 1971 through 1991. The database (150K) is zipped and can be downloaded directly to your computer (you can also order the data on diskette through Publications). Once downloaded and unzipped, the data is accessed by the World Bank's Socioeconomic Time-series Access and Retrieval System (*STARS*). This user-friendly system allows the user to view and manipulate the data and to export the data selection into other computer programs, including LOTUS 1-2-3(TM), Javelin Plus(TM), Aremos(TM), or to any programs that read ASCII characters.

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Participate in the online discussion of this report, which began in response to the Roundtable discussion of this report at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Washington, DC on October 8, 1995.

For more information on this report, you can contact through EMail Luke Haggarty.

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