State ownership

[3] In market-based economies, state-owned assets are often managed and operated as joint-stock corporations with a government owning all or a controlling stake of the company's shares.

Nationalization is a process of transferring private or municipal assets to a central government or state entity.

State-owned enterprises may or may not be expected to operate in a broadly commercial manner and may or may not have monopolies in their areas of activity.

[4][5] In the context of socialism, public ownership implies that the surplus product generated by publicly owned assets accrues to all of society in the form of a social dividend, as opposed to a distinct class of private capital owners.

There is a wide variety of organizational forms for state-run industry, ranging from specialized technocratic management to direct workers' self-management.

In traditional conceptions of non-market socialism, public ownership is a tool to consolidate the means of production as a precursor to the establishment of economic planning for the allocation of resources between organizations, as required by government or by the state.

[9] In their model, the government and a private firm can invest to improve the quality of a public good and to reduce its production costs.

It turns out that private ownership results in strong incentives to reduce costs, but it may also lead to poor quality.

[11] Moreover, the Hart-Shleifer-Vishny model assumes that the private party derives no utility from provision of the public good.