ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION During the last decade or so, the question of ownership and economic efficiency —and, on a more practical level, privatization —has become a central issue of policy debate among economists. Privatization has formed the spearhead of the Thatcherite, and other New Right, attacks on the state in the advanced capitalist nations, and has also formed an integral part of the economic reforms implemented in many developing countries with the encouragement of the World Bank and the IMF. Most importantly, the collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union-where collective ownership was the dominant form of property-has led to various programmes of radical economic reform in which private ownership is supposedly the theoretical linchpin, although in practice the actual pace of privatization has typically been rather slow.
