State Entrepreneur?: The CODESA case

Abstract

The State can influence the economic life of a country in two ways: the first is the regulation of private work, as certain forms of credit planning and direction do; the other is through their direct, and monopolistic, participation in productive activities. The state-entrepreneur is a manifestation of the latter way of acting.
In both cases, state participation in economic life is often accepted because it is expected to contribute to "efficiency" or "social justice." In the first case it is usually assumed that the State has access to strategic information that private economic operators do not have and, perianth, can act better than private economic operators. It is also mentioned that the State has more capacity to take business risks than private agents acting in isolation. 1. The search for "social justice" is defended by noting that the public administrator, in a theoretical world where there is no slight temptation to corruption, acts non-profit (financial or political) and, therefore, can promote the achievement of social interest goals that are not of interest to the private entrepreneur.