IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mib/wpaper/182.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Boundaries and governance of Italian state-owned enterprise: a quantitative approach

Author

Listed:
  • Pier Angelo Toninelli
  • Michelangelo Vasta

Abstract

For the most part of the last century the role of State owned enterprises was probably more pronounced, continuous and prolonged in Italy than elsewhere in the West. This was the response to the fact that Italian economic growth had long been penalized by structural frailties such as a narrow internal market, a shortage of capital, financial weakness and a decline of entrepreneurial initiative. Yet, the complexity of forms and organizations assumed by the State direct intervention in the economy (just to limit our analysis to the central level) reached heights of imagination and ingenuity in Italy that were probably unknown abroad: State companies, State monopolies, shareholding companies, State concerns and so on co-existed throughout the twentieth century. This helps to explaining why we do not yet have a precise and thorough measure of the weight of public enterprise on the entire economy, not to say of more specific data concerning their sectorial and/or regional distribution. Thus it has not been so far possible to identify precisely - at a micro level - the real dimension of Italian public enterprise, and hence assess a phenomenon whose actual magnitude remains unknown to us. The aim of our paper is to fill this gap by showing the basic features of the dimension, boundaries, structure, governance and location of Italian SOEs.

Suggested Citation

  • Pier Angelo Toninelli & Michelangelo Vasta, 2010. "Boundaries and governance of Italian state-owned enterprise: a quantitative approach," Working Papers 182, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2010.
  • Handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:182
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper182.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2010
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pier Angelo Toninelli & Michelangelo Vasta, 2010. "State-owned Enterprises (1936–83)," Chapters, in: Andrea Colli & Michelangelo Vasta (ed.), Forms of Enterprise in 20th Century Italy, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Johannes Hörner & L. Rachel Ngai & Claudia Olivetti, 2007. "Public Enterprises And Labor Market Performance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 48(2), pages 363-384, May.
    2. Ugo Pagano, 2019. "Proprietà e controllo delle grandi imprese: un’interpretazione del resistibile declino italiano," Department of Economics University of Siena 798, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    3. Dominique Barjot, 2011. "Public utilities and private initiative: The French concession model in historical perspective," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(5), pages 782-800, August.
    4. Emanuele Felice & Michelangelo Vasta, 2015. "Passive modernization? The new human development index and its components in Italy's regions (1871–2007)," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 19(1), pages 44-66.
    5. Antonelli, Cristiano & Amidei, Federico Barbiellini & Fassio, Claudio, 2014. "The mechanisms of knowledge governance: State owned enterprises and Italian economic growth, 1950–1994," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 43-63.
    6. Sounman Hong, 2016. "When does a public–private partnership (PPP) lead to inefficient cost management? Evidence from South Korea’s urban rail system," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(6), pages 447-454, September.
    7. Mike W. Peng & Garry D. Bruton & Ciprian V. Stan & Yuanyuan Huang, 2016. "Theories of the (state-owned) firm," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 293-317, June.
    8. Pistoresi, Barbara & Rinaldi, Alberto & Salsano, Francesco, 2017. "Government spending and its components in Italy, 1862–2009: Drivers and policy implications," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 1117-1140.
    9. Todorović Ivan & Komazec Stefan & Čudanov Mladen, 2013. "Different Successful Patterns for Implementing Holding Model in Public Sector," Business Systems Research, Sciendo, vol. 4(2), pages 58-67, December.
    10. Barbara Pistoresi & Alberto Rinaldi & Francesco Salsano, 2015. "Government expenditure and economic development: evidence from Italy 1862-2009," Department of Economics 0065, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    11. Han, Xue & Frey, Gregory E. & Geng, Yude & Cubbage, Frederick W. & Zhang, Zhaohui, 2018. "Reform and efficiency of state-owned forest enterprises in Northeast China as “social firms”," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 18-33.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Italy; State owned enterprise; size and structure; governance; economic history;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • L32 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Public Enterprises; Public-Private Enterprises
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mib:wpaper:182. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Matteo Pelagatti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpmibit.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.