IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ifs/fistud/v24y2003i2p197-234.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does privatisation matter? The long-term performance of British Telecom over 40 years

Author

Listed:
  • Massimo Florio

Abstract

In this paper, we offer and discuss new evidence on the performance of British Telecom (BT) before and after privatisation. We use a unique data-set based on company accounts over 40 years (1960-99) and original additional company data on several variables. We focus particularly on output, prices, revenues, costs, employment, productivity, profits and investment. Our key findings are that operating profits (i.e. gross profits before interest and tax) were remarkably stable before and after divestiture, and that ownership change per se had little discernible impact on productivity trends, particularly between 1984 and 1991. Major changes in performance after 1991 were, however, related to variations in financial arrangements, competition and regulatory pressure. This allows us to regard the BT case history as a natural experiment on the relative importance of privatisation, liberalisation and regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Massimo Florio, 2003. "Does privatisation matter? The long-term performance of British Telecom over 40 years," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 24(2), pages 197-234, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:24:y:2003:i:2:p:197-234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Orietta DESSY & Massimo FLORIO, 2004. "Workers' earnings in the UK before and after privatisation: a study of five industries," Departmental Working Papers 2004-13, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    2. Vergés, Joaquim, 2014. "RESULTADOS y consecuencias DE LAS PRIVATIZACIONES de Empresas Públicas: Una perspectiva internacional [THE PRIVATISATION OF STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES. RESULTS AND CONSEQUENCES:An international empiri," MPRA Paper 62655, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Mar 2015.
    3. Castelnovo, Paolo & Del Bo, Chiara F. & Florio, Massimo, 2019. "Quality of institutions and productivity of State-Invested Enterprises: International evidence from major telecom companies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 102-117.
    4. Judith Clifton & Francisco Com�n & Daniel D�az-Fuentes, 2011. "From national monopoly to multinational corporation: How regulation shaped the road towards telecommunications internationalisation," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(5), pages 761-781, August.
    5. Hicks, Timothy, 2017. "Acting Right? Privatization, Encompassing Interests, and the Left," SocArXiv uuqxg, Center for Open Science.
    6. Andreas Bartels, & Vanessa Just, & Andreas Kompalla, & Jochen Schmid, 2017. "Forces And Effects In The Privatisation Process: An Empirical Study Of Telecommunications Companies In Germany And Romania," EcoForum, "Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration - Economy, Business Administration and Tourism Department., vol. 6(1), pages 1-10, January.
    7. Bartels Andreas & Weiss Pablo, 2019. "Performance effects of privatisation: an empirical analysis of telecommunication companies in Germany and Romania," HOLISTICA – Journal of Business and Public Administration, Sciendo, vol. 10(2), pages 7-22, August.
    8. Bruno, Clementina & Manello, Alessandro, 2015. "Benchmarking and effects of reforms in the fixed telecommunications industry: A DDF approach," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 127-139.
    9. Philipp Kern & Howard Gospel, 2023. "The effects of strategy and institutions on value creation and appropriation in firms: A longitudinal study of three telecom companies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 343-366, January.
    10. Emanuele BACCHIOCCHI & Massimo FLORIO & Marco GAMBARO, 2008. "Telecom prices, regulatory reforms, and consumers’ satisfaction: evidence for 15 EU countries," Departmental Working Papers 2008-10, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano, revised 20 Jun 2008.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L32 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Public Enterprises; Public-Private Enterprises
    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:24:y:2003:i:2:p:197-234. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.