LIBRI DI MASSIMO FLORIO

Questo articolo discute recenti contributi e propone alcuni temi di ricerca per una ‘comparative political economy’ dell’impresa pubblica. Si argomenta l’opportunità di mettere al centro dell’indagine la relazione fra politiche e organizzazioni, andando oltre il tradizionale confronto di performance fra controllo pubblico e privato. In questa prospettiva, si segnalano contributi sulla fase formativa dell’intervento pubblico nell’economia di sei grandi potenze con un metodo di analisi storica comparata; sull’evoluzione dell’impresa pubblica nelle economie emergenti, particolarmente in America Latina; sulla ‘societarizzazione’ delle imprese pubbliche nel Sud del mondo; sulla rivalutazione della missione di imprese pubbliche locali e nazionali in economie sviluppate. In questa ottica si sostiene che la storia della liquidazione dell’ IRI, il maggiore gruppo industriale italiano andrebbe considerata come parte della crisi di un assetto politico-economico e non prevalentemente come una operazione finanziaria. L’articolo è concluso da considerazioni sull’agenda di ricerca futura.

The American Crisis: Travel Notes - This paper comments on an editorial on the American crisis published in the New York Times by Professor Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago. According to Mulligan, the crisis is nothing more than a financial fluctuation: the banks should not be bailed out, other financial actors can take care of business investments, the delay in investment and consumption is not a big problem and public intervention is therefore useless. This paper argues, instead, that the current crisis is not primarily financial but originates from a prolonged shock that hit income distribution. The share of labour declined, while the share of capital increased. To sustain returns on capital it was necessary to force lending to consumers. In the short term both monetary and fiscal policy are needed, but in the mid-to-long run it is necessary to return to a more balanced income distribution.

EconLit Classification: E250, E620, E650
Keywords: Financial and Economic Crisis, Banks Bail-Out, Income Distribution

Il volume raccoglie alcuni dei lavori presentati alla riunione annuale del 2006 della Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica sul tema dei servizi pubblici. Gli studi raccolti forniscono una panoramica articolata dei diversi temi sul tappeto, attraverso l’analisi delle tematiche generali – i problemi della liberalizzazione e della privatizzazione, la definizione dei rapporti pubblico-privato e i profili di articolazione territoriale dei servizi pubblici – e delle tematiche specifiche collegate ai diversi settori: energia, servizi idrici, mobilità e trasporti.

This paper offers a discussion of An Agenda for a growing Europe. Making the EU System Deliver, a report to the President of the European Commission prepared by a group of independent experts. The paper reflects the results of the III Milan European Economy Workshop (May 28-29, 2004), and my personal views. The workshop was organised by the Department of Economics, University of Milan and the Jean Monnet Chair of Economics of European Integration, with the participation of more than twenty distinguished speakers from several institutions across the EU. The paper is structured in the following sections: Europe vs. America; Budget and fiscal policy coordination; Infrastructure, R&D and human capital; Regulation and competition; Enlargement and beyond; Regional policy, and Concluding remarks.

In this paper we discuss new evidence on the performance of British Telecom before and after privatisation. We use a unique data set based on company accounts over forty years (1960-1999), and original data kindly provided by BT. For some output data we go back to 1915. We focus particularly on output, prices, revenues, costs, employment, productivity, profits and investments. Our key-finding is that operative profits were remarkably stable before and after divestiture, and that privatisation had no discernible impact on productivity trends. Major changes were however related to variations in financial arrangements and regulatory pressure.

This paper draws from a research project (the «Milan Privatisation Study») that offers a comprehensive evaluation of the welfare impact of a policy usually regarded as highly successful and vastly imitated worldwide: the privatisation policy pursued in the UK by Mrs Thatcher’s government (1979-1990) and subsequently by Mr Major’s government (1990-1997). The paper considers the impact of privatisations on five types of agents: firms, employees, shareholders, consumers and tax-payers. The main conclusion of our study is that British privatisations had modest effects on the efficiency of production and consumption. On the other hand, privatisations did have important effects on the distribution of incomes and wealth. Thus the outcome of privatisation in the UK was not unambiguosly a Pareto improvement.