A Private-Rights Standing Model to Promote Public-Regarding Behaviour by Government Owned Corporations

Abstract

This chapter provides valuable information to a well-structured government owned corporation (GOC) to encourage it to engage in public regarding behaviour. It argues that a litigation model grounded in vindicating public rights is less likely to drive the GOC to act in public-regarding ways. The GOC is more likely to engage in public regarding conduct if whose private interests are directly harmed by GOC conduct have standing to sue. The GOC is intended as temporary, with the eventual goal of transferring the public firm into private hands. Two sets of impediments remain in the GOC's efforts to mimic private sector behavior: agency costs and information asymmetries. The chapter discusses that the underlying doctrines of American Constitutional Law to a minimum and focuses instead on the factual contexts, which can meaningfully be generalised to consider the implications for signalling suboptimal GOC performance to managers and directors. It presents three groups of cases: fair trade; fair competition; and fair employment.