Reforming State-Owned Enterprises in Asia, 1st ed. 2021 Challenges and Solutions ADB Institute Series on Development Economics Series

This book analyzes state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are still significant players in many Asian economies. They provide essential public services, build and operate key infrastructure, and are often reservoirs of public employment. Their characteristics and inherent competitive advantages as publicly owned enterprises allow them to play these critical roles. Their weaknesses in governance and inefficiencies in incentive structures, however, also often lead to poor performance.

SOEs must be efficient, transparent, and accountable to level the playing field for private companies, secure the growth of a vibrant private sector, and achieve sustained and inclusive economic growth. This book analyzes the reform of SOEs in Asia, the results of which are mixed.

The volume concludes that some key conditions generally need to be met for SOE reforms to be successful: national bureaucracies must have the capacity to implement the reforms, and adverse impacts on international trade and investment must be avoided.

Dr. Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary is an associate professor of economics at Tokai University in Japan, and a visiting professor at Keio University, Japan. He completed his master’s degree in energy economics from Tehran University, Iran, in 2011 and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in energy economics from Keio University in 2015 with a scholarship from the government of Japan (MEXT). He taught as an assistant professor at Keio following the completion of his Ph.D. until March 2018 and teaching as an assistant professor at the faculty of political science and economics of Waseda University 2018-2020. He is a grantee of the Excellent Young Researcher (LEADER) status from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan with a 5 years’ competitive research grant (2019-2024).Dr. Taghizadeh-Hesary was visiting scholar, visiting professor and visiting fellow at several institutions and universities such as the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan (IEEJ) (2013–2015); the Credit Risk Database (CRD) association of Japan (2014–2015); Graduate School of Economics of the University of Tokyo (2016–2017), Griffith University, Australia (2019); The University of Tasmania, Australia (2019). Dr. Taghizadeh-Hesary has published on a wide range of topics, including energy economics, energy policy, green finance, small and medium-sized enterprises finance, monetary policy, and banking. Currently, he is serving as Associate Editor of Finance Research Letters (SSCI) and Associate Editor of Singapore Economic Review (SSCI). He has guest-edited special issues for prestigious journals including Energy Policy, Energy Economics, Finance Research Letters, The Singapore Economic Review, International Review of Economics and Finance, Economic Analysis and Policy, Journal of Economic Integration and Frontiers in Energy Research.  His research credits include authoring more than 80 academic journal papers and book chapters and the