Government-Owned Businesses

In the aggregate, within industries and within non-socialist countries, the market presence of State-owned businesses is large and growing. Such concerns accounted for 15 percent of world trade in 1979 and they produced 70 percent of world oil production, 40 percent of world iron and bauxite and they accounted for 40 percent of the world's banking assets. Certain governments tend to accord them competitive advantages. Reasons given for doing so range from the belief that they foster economic growth and employment, that they equalize the domestic businesses' power to compete with big multinational companies, that they make national planning possible, to the idea that government favor should not go to benefit private owners, even domestic ones, and that the country, rather than the corporation, is the relevant unit of competition

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