Public-Private Dialogue and Growth

Overview & Synopsis

Public-private dialogue is a professionally-facilitated process in which government and businesses collaborate to achieve economic goals through policy reform. Most public-private dialogues focus on economy-wide issues, are adopted equally by both growing and declining economies, and precede a step-up in growth. Effects of public-private dialogues focused on specific industries are separately identified from economy-wide shocks. These are null on average, but there are some successes when they compensate for weak national governance and target nascent rather than established industries. For instance, Peru’s famous mesas ejecutivas for forestry and textiles had slightly negative effects, while Nigeria’s public-private dialogue for fertilizer had the largest positive effect.