Public Enterprise Revisited

According to conventional wisdom, public ownership of industry in post-war Britain led, invariably, to under-performance. This book casts doubt upon this view by showing that, as far as the labour productivity record of the expanding state-owned industries is concerned, this was clearly not the case.The book compares the 1954-79 labour productivity record of 5 expanding public sector industries to that of 24 expanding, capital intensive, mass-production industries in the British private sector. The author shows that the public sector industries' labour productivity growth was significantly faster than that of the private sector industries. Strikingly, he also finds that the state-owned industries were narrowing their productivity gap with their US counterparts at a significantly faster rate than the private sector industries. Dr Iordanoglou concludes that it is possible that public ownership had - in the historical period investigated - a long-term positive effect on these industries. This book will be of great interest to scholars of industrial economics, public sector economics and economic history.