PRIVATISATION, STATE OWNERSHIP AND COMPANY PERFORMANCE

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.