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We examine the effect of firm ownership status on three environmentally relevant variables: energy efficiency, toxic emissions, and spending on pollution abatement. Prior research has demonstrated that public firms invest less than private firms and suggests this difference is due pressure from investors to strongly favor short over long-term earnings. We extend this logic to other firm behavior, examining whether publicly owned facilities invest in energy efficiency and pollution reduction differently than privately owned facilities. Using data from the US Census of Manufactures from 1980 to 2009, information on pollution from the Environmental Protection Agency Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and pollution abatement spending from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey, we find that facilities switching to public ownership are less energy efficient and spend less on pollution abatement than their privately owned counterparts. However, we also find that facilities switching to public ownership have lower toxic emissions than other facilities. We also examine how different sources of external pressures alter these results and find that increased regulatory scrutiny is correlated with increased energy efficiency, toxic emissions, and abatement spending. More concentrated institutional ownership in public firms is associated with lower energy efficiency as is a greater brand focus. These latter results are broadly consistent with the idea that publicly owned firms respond to pressures from investors with a reduced focus on environmentally relevant variables. However, since facilities switching to public ownership have lower toxic emissions, this suggests that there are two competing pressures in publicly owned facilities: cost pressures, consistent with lowered energy efficiency, and public perceptions, consistent with lower toxic emissions, particularly since TRI data became available. In this sense, the combination of ownership and transparency of information appears to influence how firms prioritize different stakeholders.

This chapter addresses the main issues regulating property rights in Kosovo, with particular attention given to the public property. Through this chapter, an effort will be made to present a short historical overview of property forms in Kosovo, especially its transformation from one kind to another in the past as a part of former Yugoslavia, during the period of the 90s and for the period of UNMIK Administration, as well as an objective reflection of the current state of the legislation of the Republic of Kosovo with concern to public property.

The authors carried out a desk review of academic literature, national and international regulation, reports provided by international institutions and other available important resources. Besides the theoretical review of international and local literature, legislation in Kosovo and other relevant documents, the chapter focusses on practical research by analysing the relevant legal property acts in Kosovo and the current situation in ownership and property rights, nidificate legal vacuum and existing weaknesses.

The legal acts in Kosovo have not sufficiently regulated state property’s status, so the question of which level of power is competent to manage state property has become an object of various interpretations.

The authors herein propose a few measures to regulate real property right with special attention to one public property.

The authors define the need to regulate property forms in Kosovo and their harmonisation, such as undertaking the proper coordinated steps to have an adequate property rights regime.

Chapter 3 discusses existing management models and corporate governance best practices for waste management firms. It provides some relevant experiences across Europe. It offers a focus on the ongoing remunicipalization process in the public service provision and urban waste management.

An examination of the commonalities and differences between performance management practices in the public and private sector.

A literature review of 100 publications in international academic journals over the last 20 years.

The chapter develops a framework which links the dimensions of the public/private-distinction (ownership, funding, control and type of goals) to the design and use of performance management systems (PMS). This framework subsequently informs a literature review, which can be summarised as follows: Multi-dimensionality of the PMS is core in both public and private sector organisations, but quite many private sector papers point to a financial focus at the top of the PMS, while public sector organisations show a broad variety of performance indicators, including those on societally relevant goals. In addition, a link between the PMS and strategies can be found in the public and the private sector, but the match between different strategies and PMS design is more elaborated in the private sector. These findings are largely in accordance with our expectations. The review also finds support for the assumption that performance information in public sector organisations is primarily used for external accountability reasons, while internal managerial control is the main purpose in private firms. The use of performance information is quite intensive and mostly functional in both sectors, which does not meet our expectations. Overall, the differences between performance management practices in the public and private sector are less stringent than expected.

Due to limited evidence about the importance of performance-related pay systems and no evidence about targeting in both sectors, a more focused literature review on these issues would be desirable.

Mutual learning between both sectors, for example the public sector can learn from the private sector on how to link strategy to the PMS and the private sector can learn from the public sector about serving a multitude of stakeholders in the PMS.

A comprehensive review of performance management practices in the public and private sector.

Based on the Current Population Survey, 46.6 million Americans did not have health insurance in 2005 (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2006). Lack of insurance is often associated with lower utilization rates, which may in turn adversely affect health status (Ayanian, Weissman, Schneider, Ginsburg, & Zaslavsky, 2000). Since universal health insurance is not provided for in the US, uninsured individuals must either self-pay or rely on charity care provided by hospitals and health clinics. The majority of charity care is produced in the public sector, either at the state, county, or local level (federal hospitals primarily serve a particular segment of the population – e.g., veterans in the case of Veterans Administration hospitals). Public hospital provision of “safety net” hospital services is particularly prevalent in large urban areas (Lipson & Naierman, 1996). These safety net hospitals are defined by the Institute of Medicine as having an “open door policy to serve all patients regardless of their ability to pay and provide substantial levels of care to Medicaid, the uninsured, and other vulnerable patients” (IOM, 2000). Private not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals also provide charity care but to a lesser extent than public providers, especially since the imposition of cost cutting measures both by Medicare and Medicaid (federal programs that fund health care for the elderly and indigent, respectively) and by managed care. Given that approximately 15% of US GDP is allocated to health care, cost cutting measures are laudable; however, care still needs to be provided for individuals who cannot afford it, and the burden of providing this care has to be borne somewhere in the health care system.

This chapter reviews railways with respect to their organisation, regulation and ownership, with particular reference to the reforms undertaken in Great Britain in the mid-1990s. First, with respect to organisation, railways constitute a complex industry that has tended to be dominated by integrated monoliths, often organised hierarchically and reliant on governance by command and control. More recently, countries such as Great Britain have experimented with more fragmented, atomistic structures reliant on governance by contract. Second, since their inception, railways have attracted regulation in terms of varying degrees of public control of fares, service quantity and quality, safety and rates of return. More recently, there has been an emphasis on pro-competition policies with respect to open access services (on the tracks competition) and franchising/concessions (off the tracks competition). Third, in terms of ownership, although many railways originated as private companies, a series of nationalisations meant that by the mid-1990s, most were in public ownership, although there have since been a number of privatisations and experiments with public–private partnerships. The focus of these changes has been mainly on the economic performance of the railways, with relatively little emphasis on social and environmental factors. Where sustainability has been considered, it has been mainly terms of determining organisational and financial structures that can last, with the search for such sustainable structures a continuing process.

The chapter proposes that a new public enterprise (NPE) now characterises developments in local policymaking and service delivery. The NPE places the local public sector in a leading role, either in the direct ‘contracting in’ of services previously contracted out to the private sector, or in the co-ordination of partnerships between public, private and voluntary sector providers. Such remunicipalisation is non-ideological in nature, and international in its scope, being prompted by pragmatic considerations of cost and effectiveness.

The discussion draws from the authors' cumulative primary research on local public services and regeneration and specifically from a series of interviews with local leaders and senior managers conducted in 2018 and 2019.

It was found that traditional conceptions of ‘public’ vs ‘private’ are largely outmoded. Contracting ‘in’ is practised even by those on the Right of the political spectrum. The public sector is a leader of local partnerships and it is no longer assumed that the private sector brings greater efficiency or effectiveness.

The term ‘new public enterprise’ is used in an innovative way to describe the changed relationship between public, private and voluntary sectors. This has significant implications for both practice and theory. The empirical prevalence of the NPE can readily be identified in the UK and internationally. Its theoretical implications are challenging but promising.