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Privatization In Latin America: What Does The Evidence Say?, Florencio López De Silanes, Alberto Chong

Florencio López de Silanes

After decades of poor performance and inefficient operations by state-owned enterprises, governments all over the world earnestly embraced privatization. Thousands of state-owned enterprises have been turned over to the private sector in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and eastern and western Europe. This trend was spurred by the well-documented poor performance and failures of state-owned enterprises and the efficiency improvements after privatization around the world.1 Privatiza-tion efforts have greatly stalled in recent years, however, despite world-wide evidence that points to improved performance, firm restructuring, fiscal benefits, increased output, and quality improvements following privatization.