This book is a study of one type of relation between public authorities and the private sector. In the modern world it is becoming increasingly clear that these two ways of organizing economic life must learn to get along with each other and develop vehicles of mutual advantage. This is especially true in the re lations between advanced and developing economies because for historical reasons, the development of non-Western economies today is taking a course quite different from the path of the advanced business economies of the West. It is desirable for both spheres to try and understand each other and look for ways of getting along. International tensions can be alleviated to the degree that positive attitudes are taken and mechanisms of the kind dealt with in this book are created. Much of the problem is simply one of semantics. The term "socialism" or "socialistic pattern of society", for example, which is often used in India as a positive word has very negative conno tations for Americans. There are, of course, socialists in India who would make their economy entirely publicly owned, indis tinguishable from the Chinese or the Russian, but the vast majority of leaders associated with the dominant party in India visualize a present and future mixed economy not too different from that reached by the United States through a very different road. We in the United States have been nurtured on the belief in private enterprise.

This volume, written by Robert H. Floyd, Clive S. Gray, and R.P. Short, contains three papers dealing with various aspects of the public enterprise sector and the impact that these may have on macroeconomic analysis.

The author raises questions that are relevant to most developing countries. Turkey's emphasis in the past on capital-intensive import substitution in preference to light labor-intensive export industries had negative consequences for country's growth, balance of payments, and domestic employment. This emphasis, together with the way public enterprise was managed, also helped to promote an inefficient state sector and delayed the maturation of the private sector. The author examines the performance of the state industrial ventures, collectively and individually. Deriving true financial returns from published figures and the economic returns by various adjustments of these financial returns is detailed. The important question about long-run economic benefits: to what extent might they compensate for proximate economic losses in the state sector is the major emphasis of this book.

Originally published in 1959, the author has observed at first hand the workings of public enterprise in Britain. He has coupled objectivity with an acute sense of economic perception and has produced a clear and ordered study of the workings of nationalization in industry at the time. His book does not contain an argument on whether nationalization is desirable or not. On the assumption that there is nationalization he attempts to discuss certain important problems raised by it in the fields of management, pricing, resource allocation and public control. He hopes that a discussion of this nature will contribute towards ensuring the most satisfactory results from nationalization.