TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lopez-de-Silane,Florencio
AU  - Shleifer,Andrei
AU  - Vishny,Robert W.
TI  - Privatization in the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5113
PY  - 1995
Y2  - May 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5113
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5113.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes
EDHEC Business School
393, Promenade des Anglais BP 3116
06202 Nice Cedex 3
France
Tel: +33 (0) 4 93 18 78 07
Fax: +33 (0) 4 93 18 78 41
E-Mail: Florencio.lopezdesilanes@edhec.edu

Andrei Shleifer
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center M-9
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-5046
Fax: 617/496-1708
E-Mail: ashleifer@harvard.edu

Robert W. Vishny
Booth School of Business
The University of Chicago
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-2522
Fax: 773/834-1920
E-Mail: Rvishny@gmail.com
AB  - In the United States, the two principal modes of producing local government services are inhouse provision by government employees and contracting out to private suppliers, also known as privatization.  We examine empirically how United States counties choose their mode of providing services.  The evidence indicates that state clean- government laws and state laws restricting county spending encourage privatization, whereas strong public unions discourage it.  The evidence is inconsistent with the view that efficiency considerations alone govern the provision mode, and points to the important roles played by political patronage and taxpayer resistance to government spending in the privatization decision.
ER  -