Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35384 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3953
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper examines the change in operating and financial performance of Swedish firms that were either partly or fully privatized during the period of 1989-2007. Two different methods are used to empirically investigate the performance of privatized firms. First, accounting data prior to and after the privatization are employed to measure the operating performance of privatized firms. We have found no significant difference in performances under state and private ownerships. Second, a return-based event study is found useful to measure the financial performance of privatized firms, since all the firms in the sample that were privatized have used an initial public offering (IPO). This approach allows comparison to the rest of the IPOs that were launched in the same period. It is found that the cumulative returns for the privatized firms are significantly different to private counterparts. Overall results, however, show that the privatization in Sweden was not as successful as it might have been expected and in comparison with those in other countries.
Subjects: 
Sweden
efficiency
performance measure
privatization
ratio analysis
event-study
public and private relationship
JEL: 
C12
D21
L25
L33
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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