Original scientific paper
Privatisation, State Ownership and Company Performance
Boris Crnković
Željko Požega
Jelena Briševac
Abstract
The standpoints on state ownership on the one hand and private ownership on the other changed frequently
in the past. Nevertheless, the strengthening of the role of a state in economy – brought about by the big
economic crisis in the late 1920s and 1930s and continuing after the Second World War – has caused a significantly
more active role of state ownership in many economies. In the late 1970s, state companies began to
lose their importance, mainly due to their inefficiency. This perception of inefficiency was actually the cause
of privatisation processes, which reached their peak with the beginning of transition. On the other hand, the
discussion on the relative efficiency of state-owned, private and privatised companies is still a current topic.
This paper gives an overview of the key empirical studies that examine the relative efficiency of state-owned,
private and privatised companies. Furthermore, it provides an overview of theoretical findings that give reasons
for the existence of state companies, their lesser efficiency and the reasons for privatisation. The paper
analyses the business results of sixty-nine Croatian companies in 2009, which are of special state interest
(majority holding by the state in most of them), thus providing an empirical contribution to the current
academic debate on the relative efficiency of state-owned and private companies.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
63247
URI
Publication date:
10.12.2010.
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