ABSTRACT
State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) can take very different forms of legal status: a department of a government ministry, an agency, a firm acting under the rule of corporate law, or a listed corporation totally or partially owned by the government. Crown corporations (as SOEs are called in Canada) were created by governments to make available important services in an expansive, sparsely populated nation, frequently because the private sector was not able or willing to provide them, rather than because of a preference for public ownership. Several new SOEs had already been created during the war for military reasons and to sustain failing companies. The Great Depression also played a role in the creation of new SOEs to replace private enterprises, particularly in Germany (Bel, 2010) and especially in Italy, and not because of a specific policy. In Italy, the SOE sector was already strong, since IRI, confirmed in its public role, played a large role in the productive system.
