Public enterprises as policy instruments: the importance of public entrepreneurship

Abstract

Public enterprises are policy instruments that are “rediscovered”. In parallel, a separate scientific literature exists on entrepreneurship in the public sector but has not focused on public enterprises. This article suggests that a new perspective linking both streams of research could lead to an improvement in the understanding of the role as instruments of economic policy that public enterprises could play, in particular in the new context emerging after 2008. The paper advocates that the focus of research should not be on the governance of these institutions or the particularities of ownership but on public entrepreneurship.

Keywords:

• public entrepreneurship
• public enterprise
• policy instrument
• institutions

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the four anonymous reviewers for their remarks on a previous version of this paper.