Private Counterparts Research Articles

Ownership and Performance in the Market for Corporate Control: The Role of State-Owned Enterprises

Despite a wave of privatizations in the past three decades, several governments own major corporations in industries such as energy, mining, telecommunications, transport, banking, manufacturing, in emerging economies as well as in some developed ones. Contemporary state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are increasingly active players in the international and domestic markets for corporate control, through mergers and acquisitions. This paper contributes to a new strand of literature on SOEs form the angle of the market for corporate control. Do the SOEs, behave as their private counterparts when purchasing other firms? The standard prediction of the “inefficient management hypothesis” is that firms that perform well will buy firms of inferior managerial quality (Manne, 1965). An alternative prediction is offered more recently by Rhodes-Kropf and Robinson (2008), who suggest that for US listed companies “like buys like”. To test both the alternative views and the research question on how public ownership has an impact on the market for corporate control, we build a new dataset from Zephyr and Orbis, two databases developed by the Bureau Van Dijk since early 2000s. Our sample is composed by 25,332 deals worldwide, of which around 10% are performed by a SOE acquirer. By focusing on the difference of the return on sales between the acquirer and the target firm, and controlling for different factors, we find that the Rhodes-Kropf and Robinson (2008) prediction is more likely for listed companies, but not for the others; SOEs tend to buy “lower” relative to their own performance than private companies do, while their behavior converges towards the private benchmark when the SOEs are listed. We conclude that mergers and acquisitions by SOEs in the years we consider are not as much at variance with the “inefficient market hypothesis” as private firms.

Macroprudential regulation and bank performance: Does ownership matter?

Employing data on Indian banks for 1992–2012, the article examines the impact of macroprudential measures on bank performance. First, it finds that state-owned banks tend to have lower profitability and soundness than their private counterparts. Next, it tests whether such differentials between state-owned and private banks are driven by macroprudential measures; it finds strong support for this hypothesis.

Determinants of Tunisian Bank Efficiency: A DEA Analysis

The objective of this research is to study the x-efficiency of Tunisian commercial banks for the period 1996-2010 using a DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method. Our results suggest that the cost efficiency of the sector is estimated at a score of 41.0%. Market share in terms of deposit banks and their engagement in risky activities especially in the field of credit negatively affecting their efficiency. A high bank capitalization positively influences the latter. In addition, state-owned banks are more efficient than their private counterparts.

A Comparison Of Private And Public Sector Performance

In the past, public sector organizations have been used as examples of service atrocities but in light of unstable overall customer satisfaction levels across countries and industries the purpose of this research note is to investigate whether their private counterparts fare much better in terms of service performance. A quantitative, quasi-experimental study was carried out with 200 respondents. The survey tool was based on the SERVQUAL framework to compare recipients service expectations and perceptions in private and public service settings. The results reveal no significant differences between expectations towards and perceptions of private and public services. The traditional SERVQUAL dimensions explain 74% of overall satisfaction in the public, and 87% in the private sector. As this is a cross-sectional study more research is necessary to understand whether the results are due to an amelioration in the public and a deterioration in the private sector, or vice versa, or neither. The study stimulates debate and further research into the underlying reasons for customers similar expectations and perceptions across sectors. Is actual service performance across sectors assimilating? Or do perceptions in one sector setting impact on expectations and perceptions in another?

The Marketing Challenges of Healthcare Entrepreneurship: An Empirical Investigation in Nigeria

This paper investigated the effects of such independent variables as technology, market segmentation and cost reduction on the delivery of the consumer-endorsed services with special interest on healthcare entrepreneurs in Aba and Umuahia metropolis. 96 questionnaires were administered randomly among medical doctors, pharmacists/laboratory technicians and qualified nurses/midwives of 12 hospitals in Umuahia and 20 hospitals in Aba metropolis. Out of the 74 copies returned, 72 were found usable for analysis. Analyzing the data using simple percentages, t-test and Pearson Correlation Coefficient, it was found that the interactions between the aforementioned independent variables and the delivery of patient-endorsed healthcare services were statistically significant. Therefore successful healthcare delivery requires the challenges of channeling competencies to market segments where competitive advantage is enduring as opposed to spreading thin across various fronts. Based on the financial setbacks of private healthcare providers and the need to further liberalize the economy, the government was advised to borrow the conspiracy theory of the Japanese. This involves the tripartite of the government, the banks and the entrepreneurs whereby the last can borrow money for a long time to acquire latest equipment and other resources with the help of government guarantee. Also, government was advised to intensify more effort on making the public healthcare providers more proficient and more humane in the delivery of patientendorsed services since their private counterparts charge high and worst still they rarely have the necessary resources in place.

Abnormal Returns to Public and Private Acquirers of Failed Banks: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the FDIC

We ask whether the financial health of the FDIC limits its ability to efficiently resolve failed institutions. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find acquirers experience large and long-lasting abnormal returns around the announcement of a failed bank acquisition when the deposit insurance fund is experiencing large outflows. This effect is not arising from positive information revealed about the acquirer at the announcement or from changes in the competitiveness of bidding. We also document that public acquirers experience higher abnormal returns than their private counterparts and unlike prior studies, control for this selection bias in our estimation of abnormal returns.

The efficiency of state-owned and privatized firms: Does ownership make a difference?

This paper compares the pre- and post-privatization efficiency of a sample of state-owned enterprises privatized in Spain with the efficiency of their closest private competitors. We perform a two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis model. In the first stage the efficiency is estimated through a bootstrapped data envelopment analysis, and then followed in the second stage by a bootstrapped truncated regression. Our results provide evidence that (i) there were no significant differences in efficiency between the state-owned enterprises and their private counterparts before privatization; and (ii) the efficiency of newly privatized firms significantly increased after their privatization, while private competitors showed no significant improvement during the same post-privatization period.

Changing and Evolving Relationships between Two- and Four-Year Colleges and Universities: They're Not Your Parents' Community Colleges Anymore

This paper describes a summit on Community Colleges in the Evolving STEM Education Landscape organized by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and held at the Carnegie Institution for Science on December 15, 2011. This summit followed a similar event organized by Dr. Jill Biden, spouse of the Vice President, and held at the White House in October 2010, which sought to bring national attention to the changing missions and purposes of community colleges in contemporary American society.1 The NRC/NAE event built on the White House summit, while focusing on the changing roles of community colleges in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. An in-depth summary of the summit was prepared by the NRC and NAE for publication in late Spring 2012 by the National Academies Press (NRC and National Academy of Engineering, 2012 ). This paper provides a synopsis of that report, which is available at www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13399, and emphasizes how we can use the report to improve STEM education for our students, but also how much progress still needs to be made to realize this ideal.

What's Your Role in The Future of Higher Education?

What's Your Role in The Future of Higher Education?

Overcoming Negative Media Coverage: Does Government Communication Matter?

Public administration scholars often note that government should engage in more effective external communication to improve citizen trust and maintain political legitimacy. An important part of the belief is that more effective communication can lead to more favorable media coverage that ultimately shapes citizen trust in government. However, the link between government communication and media coverage remains empirically untested. Through a survey of 881 government and business communicators, this study tests the relationship between external communication activities and media coverage. The study shows that government organizations report being less likely to have favorable news coverage than their private counterparts, but most government organizations do report that their media coverage is favorable. Moreover, the results show that active media interaction, organizational support for communication, and adequate communication budget are associated with reporting more favorable coverage. In comparison, a different set of variables, except adequate communication budget, are found to affect whether business organizations report having more favorable media coverage.

Do public television channels provide more diversity than private ones?

Since early 2009 there has been no advertising on French public television channels after 8 p.m. One of the arguments in favour of this reform was that it would promote diversity and that public channels would be less tempted to broadcast homogeneous programming to generate greater advertising revenue. Based on a comparison between British, French and Turkish channels the aim of this paper is to determine whether public channels perform better in terms of diversity than private ones. The paper recalls the reasons why public television channels should differentiate themselves from their private counterparts as far as diversity is concerned. A methodology for assessing diversity, which includes a set of indexes for measuring diversity of programming as well as tools for assessing disparity, is then proposed. Earlier literature finds that public television channels are more diverse than and significantly distinct from their private counterparts. In this exploratory study we will show that, contrary to the literature, public channels have no clear advantage in terms of diversity. Competitive pressure aimed at maximizing viewership plays a role for all channels regardless of their mode of funding, thus leading to greater homogeneity of programming.

Where Politics Is a Blood Sport

The 1991 restructuring of Massachusetts system of higher education is explained and analyzed using McLendon’s “Policy Stream Model of Decentralization Agenda Setting,” a revised Garbage Can model, which proves useful insofar as the case is placed in its historical context. Public higher education in Massachusetts has suffered as a “second class” citizen next to its prominent private counterparts and is often subject to the whims of politicians. The 1991 restructuring can be explained by public higher education’s historical relationship with Massachusetts’ state government and the political environment of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The 1991 restructuring is an intrinsically interesting historical case of governance reform given its political nature, the scope of the reform, and the possible lessons that can be gleaned from it that may inform our understanding of agenda setting for higher education governance reform and governance reform in general.

An Investigation into the Bitewing Radiographic Prescribing Patterns of West Kent General Dental Practitioners

The primary aims of the study were to investigate the use of bitewing radiography within primary dental care and adherence to guidelines on bitewing radiography by general dental practitioners (GDPs) in the West Kent Primary Care Trust (PCT) area. Within the overall aims, the study had objectives to investigate the use of radiographic guidelines, audit and caries risk assessment, the influence of private and National Health Service (NHS) practice, and the influence of the demographic profile of the GDPs on these variables. Data were gathered via a piloted self-completion questionnaire, circulated to all GDPs listed on the NHS Choices website as practising in the West Kent PCT area. Three mailings and follow-up telephone calls were used. The resulting data were entered into a statistical software database and, where relevant, statistically tested, using the chi-square test. Of 223 GDPs, 167 responded (75%). GDPs with a high NHS commitment were significantly less likely to follow Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK) guidance on prescribing bitewing radiographs for adults (P<0.01) and children (P<0.05) than were mainly private GDPs. Mainly NHS GDPs were more likely 'always/mostly' to follow National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidance (83 compared to 59) (P<0.05) and also to risk-assess patients (83 compared to 62). Only 115 (71%) had carried out a radio graphic audit or peer review in the preceding three years. Those with postgraduate qualifications were more likely (P<0.05) to carry out radiographic audit. The study confirmed previous research reporting the under-use of radiography for caries detection and also the failure of some GDPs to comply with ionising radiation regulations. West Kent GDPs with a high NHS commitment were less likely to follow radiographic guidance than their private counterparts. This suggests that further efforts to disseminate information on radiographic guidelines and to educate GDPs are necessary to improve adherence with all aspects of radiography within general dental practice. Research into factors that influence GDPs' decision-making with regards to radiographic prescription may further inform the profession as to the best methods to lead to behavioural change. The dental profession and its regulators need to make a concerted effort to educate and inform GDPs so that this behaviour is modified.

Ownership, Institutions and Productivity of European Electricity Firms

Using firm-level balance-sheet data comparable across EU countries, we consider firms active in generation, distribution and transmission of electricity and their ownership structure to empirically investigate the interaction of public versus private ownership and the quality of institutions as determinants of productivity. While earlier literature has traditionally focused on ownership as an internal governance mechanism, and has suggested that public ownership is associated with lower productivity than under private ownership, here we focus on the role of institutions as an external governance mechanism. After controlling for size, wages, countries and sectors, we confirm that government-owned tend to be less productive than their private counterparts (a result robust to different productivity measures), but we also discover two new facts. First, when the control of the firm by government is indirect, i. e. when government ownership is at the top of the control chain, the negative productive effect is weaker. Second, this effect is smaller in countries with high-quality institutions and public enterprises are more efficient than in countries with a poor institutional environment

Bank Ownership and Performance

This paper builds a new dataset on bank ownership and bank performance covering approximately 50,000 observations for 119 countries over the 1995-2002 period. The paper then uses the dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance, providing separated estimations for developing and industrial countries. It is found that, while ownership is strongly correlated with performance in developing countries, that ownership is not correlated with performance in industrial countries. In particular, the paper suggests that state-owned banks operating in developing countries tend to have lower profitability and higher costs than their private counterparts, and that the opposite is true for foreign-owned banks (which tend to be characterized by higher profitability and lower costs). We also find that, in developing countries, the entry of foreign banks plays a useful role by making domestic banks more efficient in terms of overhead cost and spreads, although we do not find any effect on profitability of domestic banks.

Occupational risk prevention in endoscopy units: a pending issue

The degree of Knower and compliance with occupational risk prevention measures in the Spanish gastrointestinal endoscopy units is unknown. 1. To assess compliance with occupational risk prevention measures in GIE units. 2. To determine which factors influence the fulfillment of occupational risk prevention measures. a validated survey was supplied to 300 GIE units, including questions on: 1. General occupational risk prevention measures; 2. occupational risk prevention measures during disinfection; 3. occupational risk prevention measures during examination. The following Hospital or GIE Unit characteristics were evaluated: Type of hospital according to the Spanish National Health Service; Number of hospital beds; Advanced diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed and; Centers providing training in the field of endoscopy. response: 196 GIE units (65%). 104 GIE units (53% CI95%: 46-60) fulfill less than 50% of the occupational risk prevention measures studied.The RR of less than 50% of the ORP measures being fulfilled is 1.975 times higher at public hospitals than at private facilities (CI95%: 1.11-3.52). None of the remaining factors analyzed proved to have a significant influence. compliance with occupational risk prevention measures in Spanish GIE units is inadequate and must be improved. Public hospitals in Spain comply with fewer occupational risk prevention measures than their private counterparts.

Analysis Using Identical Patient Types Across Providers and the Implications for the Health Care Supply Chain

Along the health care supply chain, cost and quality measures are vital in the decision-making process for treatment and care delivery. This study applies statistical significance to a hypothesis about cost effectiveness of patients’ total charges by health insurance providers for different heart conditions. A retrospective, observational analysis of data is collected from an urban hospital in the Southeastern United States. Using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) database, diagnoses are selected for further analysis based on their prevalence in the general population. The numbers of procedures as well as the patient’s length of stay in the hospital are significantly higher among the Medicare population. However, results indicate that although Medicaid and Medicare have significantly higher ordinary average total charges than the private counterparts, the difference is negligible when comparing means adjusted to remove covariate influence. One implication is that if private insurers were to insure the same types of high risk patients as Medicare and Medicaid the average total charges of a visit would be comparable between providers. These results also suggest that to enhance cost saving measures in government funded insurance programs, the clinical pathways need to be adapted to reduce length of stay and number of procedures per visit.

Analysis Using Identical Patient Types Across Providers and the Implications for the Health Care Supply Chain

Along the health care supply chain, cost and quality measures are vital in the decision-making process for treatment and care delivery. This study applies statistical significance to a hypothesis about cost effectiveness of patients’ total charges by health insurance providers for different heart conditions. A retrospective, observational analysis of data is collected from an urban hospital in the Southeastern United States. Using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) database, diagnoses are selected for further analysis based on their prevalence in the general population. The numbers of procedures as well as the patient’s length of stay in the hospital are significantly higher among the Medicare population. However, results indicate that although Medicaid and Medicare have significantly higher ordinary average total charges than the private counterparts, the difference is negligible when comparing means adjusted to remove covariate influence. One implication is that if private insurers were to insure the same types of high risk patients as Medicare and Medicaid the average total charges of a visit would be comparable between providers. These results also suggest that to enhance cost saving measures in government funded insurance programs, the clinical pathways need to be adapted to reduce length of stay and number of procedures per visit.Request access from your librarian to read this article's full text.

Efficiency and quality of care in nursing homes: an Italian case study

This study investigates efficiency and quality of care in nursing homes. By means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the efficiency of 40 nursing homes that deliver their services in the north-western area of the Lombardy Region was assessed over a 3-year period (2005-2007). Lombardy is a very peculiar setting, since it is the only Region in Italy where the healthcare industry is organised as a quasi-market, in which the public authority buys health and nursing services from independent providers-establishing a reimbursement system for this purpose. The analysis is conducted by generating bootstrapped DEA efficiency scores for each nursing home (stage one), then regressing those scores on explanatory variables (stage two). Our DEA model employed two input (i.e. costs for health and nursing services and costs for residential services) and three output variables (case mix, extra nursing hours and residential charges). In the second-stage analysis, Tobit regressions and the Kruskall-Wallis tests of hypothesis to the efficiency scores were applied to define what are the factors that affect efficiency: (a) the ownership (private nursing houses outperform their public counterparts); and (b) the capability to implement strategies for labour cost and nursing costs containment, since the efficiency heavily depends upon the alignment of the costs to the public reimbursement system. Lastly, even though the public institutions are less efficient than the private ones, the results suggest that public nursing homes are moving towards their private counterparts, and thus competition is benefiting efficiency.

Separate and unequal: The influence of neighborhood and school characteristics on spatial proximity between fast food and schools

ObjectiveSocial science and health literature have identified residential segregation as a critical factor in exposure to health-related resources, including food environments. Differential spatial patterning of food environments surrounding schools has significant import for youth. We examined whether fast food restaurants clustered around schools in New York City, and whether any observed clustering varied as a function of school type, school racial demographics, and area racial and socioeconomic demographics. MethodWe geocoded fast food locations from 2006 (n=817) and schools from 2004–2005 (n=2096; public and private, elementary and secondary) in the five boroughs of New York City. A point process model (inhomogeneous cross-K function) examined spatial clustering. ResultsA minimum of 25% of schools had a fast food restaurant within 400m. High schools had higher fast food clustering than elementary schools. Public elementary and high schools with large proportions of Black students or in block groups with large proportions of Black residents had higher clustering than White counterparts. Finally, public high schools had higher clustering than private counterparts, with 1.25 to 2 times as many restaurants than expected by chance. ConclusionThe results suggest that the geography of opportunity as it relates to school food environments is unequal in New York City.