Market Liberalization in a Small Open Economy and Its Impact on Employment Characteristics

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2068
• Author: Paraskevi Pappa,Kostas Karamanis,Eirini Triarchi
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Published date: 01 July 2016

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Strat. Change 25: 361–369 (2016)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2068

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strategic Change: Briengs in Entrepreneurial Finance

Strategic Change

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2068

Market Liberalization in a Small Open Economy and

Its Impact on Employment Characteristics1

Kostas Karamanis

Epirus’ Technological Educational Institute, Greece

Eirini Triarchi

Epirus’ Technological Educational Institute, Greece

Paraskevi Pappa

Epirus’ Technological Educational Institute, Greece

Market liberalization affects overall employment.

e aim of this article is to investigate the consequences of market liberalization

on employment in a small open economy. As a case in point, we take the Greek

telecommunications sector. Our survey is based on two known facts.

Firstly, the major structural changes such as deregulation and privatization of

the telecommunications sector since 1990. From its early stages, the telecommu-

nications sector operated in every country under the status of strict state monopoly

and almost absolute protectionism (Smith, 1995; Spiller and Cardili, 1997;

Sheshinski and Lopez-Calva, 1998; Nestor and Mahboobi, 1999; Shirley and

Walsh, 2000; Wilson and Zhou, 2001). However, in the course of time, the rising

customer demand for higher quality, new services, and lower prices led to neces-

sary structural changes (OECD, 1995; Gual and Waverman, 1998; Nestor and

Mahboobi, 1999; Heracleous, 2001; Koski, 2002). e institutional liberalization

of the specic industry took place quickly at European and global level, aimed at

upgrading the role of the market and establishing a competitive environment.

Specically, the role of state as producer and supplier of telecommunication ser-

vices has been clearly in doubt. Its role has mostly moved from the responsibility

of ownership and management to the exercise of a general supervision of the

market (Wilson and Zhou, 2001; Eliassen and From, 2007). Moreover, a new

regulatory framework has been created in terms of an independent regulatory

authority for the eective control of competition (Levi-Faur, 2003; Omran, 2004).

At management level, the criticism against public enterprises focuses on their

bureaucratic character, and their inexible and inecient operation based

1 JEL classication codes: L10, L11, L22, L32, L33, L96, M51, M54.

The institutional liberalization of

specic industry took place

quickly at European and global

level, aimed at upgrading the role

of the market and establishing a

competitive environment.

Two opposing trends were noted

in the area of employment: job

losses in public enterprises and

employment growth in new

private enterprises operating in

new subsectors.

A change in ownership relations,

via privatization and the entry of

private undertakings in the

market, causes important

differentiations in size and

characteristics of employment.