Using a series of studies, this book shows that ownership structure plays a major role in the national economy as a whole. Inefficient State Owned Enterprises (SOE's) damage the development of private enterprises and overall economic growth in various ways. The policy implications are very clear: in order to achieve healthy and fast economic development, there must be a radical reform of SOEs. Moreover, the aim of the SOE reform is not just to highlight the enterprises’ efficiency, but also create favorable conditions for financial deregulation, elimination of market segmentation, weakened market monopoly, and balanced regional economic development. The book argues that SOE reform is pivotal to stimulating general economic reform and development in order for China to achieve a smooth transition to a mature market economy.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play significant roles in developing economies in Asia and SOE performance remains crucial for economy-wide productivity and growth. This book looks at SOEs in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, and Viet Nam, which together present a panoramic view of SOEs in the region. It also presents insights from the Republic of Korea on the evolving role of the public sector in various stages of development. It explores corporate governance challenges and how governments could reform SOEs to make them efficient drivers of the long-term productivity-induced growth essential to Asia's transition to high-income status.

Prior to the COVID-19 shock, the key challenge facing policymakers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia region was how to generate strong, sustainable, job-rich, inclusive growth. Post-COVID-19, this challenge has only grown given the additional reduction in fiscal space due to the crisis and the increased need to support the recovery. The sizable state-owned enterprise (SOE) footprint in the region, together with its cost to the government, call for revisiting the SOE sector to help open fiscal space and look for growth opportunities.

China's extraordinarily rapid economic growth since 1978, driven by market-oriented reforms, has set world records and continued unabated, despite predictions of an inevitable slowdown. In The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?, renowned China scholar Nicholas R. Lardy argues that China's future growth prospects could be equally bright but are shadowed by the specter of resurgent state dominance, which has begun to diminish the vital role of the market and private firms in China's economy. Lardy's book arrives in timely fashion as a sequel to his pathbreaking Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China, published by PIIE in 2014. This book mobilizes new data to trace how President Xi Jinping has consistently championed state-owned or controlled enterprises, encouraging local political leaders and financial institutions to prop up ailing, underperforming companies that are a drag on China's potential. As with his previous book, Lardy's perspective departs from conventional wisdom, especially in its contention that China could achieve a high growth rate for the next two decades—if it reverses course and returns to the path of market-oriented reforms.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a significant role in the economy of Papua New Guinea (PNG), as they do in other Pacific countries. They provide a range of essential services, most notably power, water, telecommunications, and transport that are vital to commerce and to the livelihoods of all communities. The performance of the SOEs therefore has an important impact on PNG's ability to achieve inclusive economic growth. This study benchmarks the performance of PNG's SOEs with those of Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Tonga; assesses the key drivers of this performance; and identifies successful reform strategies that can guide future policy action. Particular attention is given to the legal, regulatory, governance, and monitoring frameworks of each country, given their known impact on the performance of the SOEs.

This book analyzes state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are still significant players in many Asian economies. They provide essential public services, build and operate key infrastructure, and are often reservoirs of public employment. Their characteristics and inherent competitive advantages as publicly owned enterprises allow them to play these critical roles. Their weaknesses in governance and inefficiencies in incentive structures, however, also often lead to poor performance. SOEs must be efficient, transparent, and accountable to level the playing field for private companies, secure the growth of a vibrant private sector, and achieve sustained and inclusive economic growth. This book analyzes the reform of SOEs in Asia, the results of which are mixed. The volume concludes that some key conditions generally need to be met for SOE reforms to be successful: national bureaucracies must have the capacity to implement the reforms, and adverse impacts on international trade and investment must be avoided.

The Nature, the Performance, and the Reform of State-owned Enterprises provides a detailed description of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China with respect to both efficiency and income distribution. It shows that state ownership in the form of SOEs does not use resources efficiently and has a poor record in income distribution. Moreover, SOEs are found to enjoy unfair advantages in their competition with other firms. To illustrate the point, the book presents data revealing how favored policies, monopolistic powers, and subsidies benefit SOEs. These advantages are worth several trillion yuans a year. It is a sad irony that such wealth of the people is used to beef up the revenues of the SOEs, making their accounts look much better than they should be.This book, with its rich empirical data and information, is an authoritative reference for researchers interested in SOEs. It is also a good read for students of social sciences and the public to learn more about SOEs.