The performance of public enterprises

The purpose of this paper is to argue in favour of public enterprises that would be accountable for their performance, that is the way they fulfil the missions assigned to them by the public authority. This requires a rigorous and regular performance assessment. If adopted earlier such an approach would have avoided unneeded and costly privatizations as well as being trapped by inefficient public-private partnership arrangements. Recent evidence on enterprise performance seems to point out that institutions matters more than ownership.