## Governance and State-Owned Enterprises: How Costly is Corruption?

_IMF Working Papers, November 22, 2019_

## Source details

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: Anja Baum, Clay Hackney, Paulo A Medas, Mouhamadou Sy
- Published: November 22, 2019
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513519296.001

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### Summary findings
- State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are present in key sectors worldwide and can provide an important public service.
- Widespread concern exists that SOE activities are negatively affected by corruption, but there is limited cross-country analysis on the costs of corruption for SOEs.
- New firm-level evidence across a large number of countries shows:
  - SOEs perform as well as private firms in core sectors when corruption is low.
  - SOE governance reforms can generate significant performance gains, based on a novel database of reforms.

### Themes, scope, and data
- Focus: impact of corruption on SOE performance; assessment of governance reforms for SOEs.
- Data scope: firm-level data across a large number of countries; use of a novel database of reforms to identify effects of governance changes.
- Subject tags from the page: Commodities, Corruption, Crime, Economic sectors, Electricity, Expenditure, Labor, Labor costs, Public enterprises, Public expenditure review
- Keywords from the page: construction firm, Corruption, current ratio, Electricity, firm-level indicators, Global, governance reform, Labor costs, operating profit, private firm, Public enterprises, Public expenditure review, SOE conditionality, SOE performance, SOE reform, solid windowtext, WP

### Policy implications and recommendations (as implied by findings)
- Reducing corruption can close performance gaps between SOEs and private firms in core sectors.
- Implementing SOE governance reforms can yield significant performance improvements.
- Cross-country firm-level analysis and reform databases are valuable tools for evaluating SOE policies and anticorruption efforts.

*IMF Working Paper No. 2019/253 — Anja Baum, Clay Hackney, Paulo A Medas, Mouhamadou Sy (November 22, 2019).*

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- **Working Paper**
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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2019/11/22/governance-and-state-owned-enterprises-how-costly-is-corruption-48800_