Explaining the behavior of state-owned enterprises : Mexico's Pemex in comparative perspective

Abstract

In spite of the wave of privatization of the 1980s and 1990s, state ownership of enterprise remains a very important part of the political economies of both developing and industrialized nations. The conventional wisdom in industrial organization states that public enterprises are inefficient; nevertheless, it says very little about the wide variation among these firms both within and across countries. This dissertation provides a new analytical framework to explain differences in behavior among state-owned enterprises. New insights are possible thanks to the use of theoretical and methodological tools from three different fields: political science, economics, and organizational sociology. State-owned enterprise behavior is conceptualized as having two elements, business efficiency and policy utilization, and it can largely be explained with only three variables: the ideology of the government's ruling coalition, the degree of competition in the business environment, and the level of cohesion of the company's managers. Subsequently, this study applies the framework to explain the puzzling variation in the behavior of the subsidiary companies of the Mexican state-owned petroleum enterprise, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Throughout the dissertation, statistical analysis and qualitative research-including over 100 in-depth interviews conducted with government and oil industry officials from Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States-provide empirical support.