Rohan Pitchford

Privatisation in Australia: Understanding the Incentives in Public and Private Firms

Privatisation has been an important tool of government policy in Australia and overseas in the last two decades. We explain recent contributions to research in privatisation, and apply a simple framework to ownership policy in a wide variety of Australian cases, including prisons, airports, Telstra, water and gas distribution, and ambulance services. The framework is not limited to these applications, and is aimed at providing a starting point for policy makers in their assessment of alternative ownership regimes. Our analysis is supportive of other authors, who have cast doubt on the wisdom of prison privatisation, and we extend this conclusion to ambulance services and the disposal of highly toxic waste. Application of our framework also suggests that Australian privatisations may have involved excessive separation of assets. The framework also provides a basis for arguing that a key monopoly component of Telstra—the ‘wires’ component—be kept in public ownership, and access auctioned to service providers. We consider the possible pitfalls of corporatisation policy, and argue that corporatised entities may operate to improve the appearance of success at the expense of the reality.

The land assembly problem revisited

As in the standard land assembly problem, a developer wants to buy two adjacent blocks of land belonging to two di¤erent owners. The value of the two blocks of land to the developer is greater than the sum of the individual values of the blocks for each owner. Unlike the land assembly literature, however, our focus is on the incentive that each lot owner has to delay the start of negotiations, rather than on the public goods nature of the problem. An incentive for delay exists, for example, when owners perceive that being last to sell will allow them to capture a larger share of the joint surplus from the development. We show that competition at point of sale can cause equilibrium delay, and that cooperation at point of sale will eliminate delay.

Private or Public? Towards a Taxonomy of Optimal Ownership and Management Regimes

We develop a theory of public versus private ownership based on value diversion by managers. Government is assumed to face stronger institutional constraints than has been assumed in previous literature. The model which emerges from these assumptions is flexible and has wide application. We provide a mapping between the qualitative characteristics of an asset, its main use - including public goods characteristics, and spillovers to other assets values - and the optimal ownership and management regime.

Tendering and Bidding for Access: A Regulator's Guide to Auctions

Tenders and traditional auctions are increasingly being used in regulation; as a consequence it is essential regulators have an understanding of the basics of auction theory. There is no simple prescription for the design of an auction or tender that will fit all situations; moreover, the costs from inappropriate auction and tender design can be high For example, while a second-price sealed bid auction is efficient in the absence of collusion, if participants can collude then such auction formats can result in very low revenue. Low revenue can also result with a second-price auction when there are few bidders and no reserve price.

Strategic Behavior in Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Impact and Policy Responses

The restructuring of sovereign debt is time consuming. For the period since 1970, the time between an initial default on a debt and the final restructuring of that debt has averaged roughly seven years (Pitchford and Wright 2007). These delays show little sign of abating. Argentina’s default of 2000 remains unresolved at the time of writing, and US courts have recently affirmed the use of pari passu clauses to prevent the servicing of new debts while previously issued debt remains in default and hence limits a country’s ability to borrow again.1 Likewise, although Greece used the domestic legislation to promptly restructure privately held bonds issued under Greek law in 2012, a future restructuring involving offcial creditors and foreign law bondholders appears inevitable.2

An Economic Analysis of Australian Damage Remedies for Misleading Prospectuses: Trade Practices Act versus Corporations Law

Laws that address damages caused by deceptive or misleading prospectuses impact on the incentive issuers face to create such prospectuses, and hence impact on the level of investment. In Australia, it has been proposed to shift from a strict liability regime under s52 of the Trade Practices Act, to a due diligence regime under the Corporations Law. I argue that due diligence is inferior to strict liability for large firms, but in some cases may be preferred to strict liability for small firms.

Gender, regulation and the airwaves

LYNDALL SHOPE-MOFOLE, Councillor for the Independent Broadcasting Authority, spoke to LOU HAYSOM about the need to shape a gender-sensitive policy in the broadcast sector. Dr Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane, co-chairperson of the IBA, joined the discussion

Separating the Roles of Speculators and Consumers: a Model of Futures Trade

The general equilibrium model of Britto (1984) is criticised. In particular, it is shown that allowing consumers to trade on the futures market leads to more complicated results than necessary. If consumers do not trade futures, and only producers and speculators do, results are greatly simplified. Consumer risk parameters, and parameters of producers production function are irrelevant. The differential between the futures price and the expected spot price, and the direction of futures trade is shown to depend in a straightforward way on the price elasticity of demand for the product on the spot market.