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29-632: The Midlands Electricity Board was the public sector utility company responsible for the purchase of electricity from the electricity generator (the Central Electricity Generating Board from 1958) and its distribution and sale of electricity to customers in the Midlands of England prior to 1990. As Midlands Electricity plc it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of

58-404: A state-owned enterprise . A state-owned enterprise might variously operate as a not-for-profit corporation , as it may not be required to generate a profit; as a commercial enterprise in competitive sectors; or as a natural monopoly . Governments may also use the profitable entities they own to support the general budget. The creation of a state-owned enterprise from other forms of public property

87-406: A central government or state entity. Municipalization is the process of transferring private or state assets to a municipal government. A state-owned enterprise is a commercial enterprise owned by a government entity in a capitalist market or mixed economy . Reasons for state ownership of commercial enterprises are that the enterprise in question is a natural monopoly or because the government

116-417: A non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service. Public enterprises, or state-owned enterprises, are self-financing commercial enterprises that are under public ownership which provide various private goods and services for sale and usually operate on a commercial basis. Organizations that are not part of

145-423: A specific state institution or branch of government, used exclusively by that branch, such as a research laboratory. The latter refers to assets and resources owned by the population of a state which are mostly available to the entire public for use, such as a public park (see public space ). In neoclassical economic theory , the desirability of state ownership has been studied using contract theory . According to

174-406: A whole. As such, state ownership is only one possible expression of public ownership, which itself is one variation of the broader concept of social ownership. 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

203-416: 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

232-431: Is called corporatization . In Soviet-type economies , state property was the dominant form of industry as property. The state held a monopoly on land and natural resources, and enterprises operated under the legal framework of a nominally planned economy , and thus according to different criteria than enterprises in market and mixed economies. Nationalization is a process of transferring private or municipal assets to

261-563: Is desirable. 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. Hence, depending on the available investment technologies, there are situations in which state ownership is better. The Hart-Shleifer-Vishny theory has been extended in many directions. For instance, some authors have also considered mixed forms of private ownership and state ownership. In

290-500: Is promoting economic development and industrialization . 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. The transformation of public entities and government agencies into government-owned corporations is sometimes a precursor to privatization . State capitalist economies are capitalist market economies that have high degrees of government-owned businesses. Public ownership of

319-674: The FTSE 100 Index . The Midlands Electricity Board was formed in 1947, under the Electricity Act of that year. The counterpart of the East Midlands board , it served southern, and western parts of Warwickshire , as well as the counties of Worcestershire , Herefordshire , Shropshire , and Staffordshire , as well as most of Gloucestershire , the West Midlands conurbation and northern Oxfordshire . The key people on

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348-423: The means of production is a subset of social ownership , which is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy. However, state ownership and nationalization by themselves are not socialist, as they can exist under a wide variety of different political and economic systems for a variety of different reasons. State ownership by itself does not imply social ownership where income rights belong to society as

377-417: The state sector , is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises . Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military , law enforcement , infrastructure , public transit , public education , along with health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials . The public sector might provide services that

406-498: The Hart-Shleifer-Vishny model it is assumed that all parties have the same information, while Schmitz (2023) has studied an extension of their analysis allowing for asymmetric information . Moreover, the Hart-Shleifer-Vishny model assumes that the private party derives no utility from provision of the public good. Besley and Ghatak (2001) have shown that if the private party (a non-governmental organization) cares about

435-530: The State civil service ( Fonction publique d'État , FPE) includes teachers and soldiers, and employs 44% of the workforce. The local civil service ( Fonction publique territoriale ; FPT) is made up of employees of town halls and regional councils: 25% of the workforce. The hospital civil service ( Fonction publique hospitalière , FPH) consists of doctors and nurses and is 21% of the workforce. Right-libertarian and Austrian School economists have criticized

464-534: The board were: Chairman G. S. Buckingham (1964, 1967), deputy chairman R. Mallet (1967), full-time members R. Mallet (1964) R. Cook and H. A. P. Caddell (1967). As with the EMEB, it kept a network of showrooms across its area, to allow customers to pay bills, and order many types of electrical goods. The MEB , Southern Electric and Eastern Electricity merged their showrooms, forming the Powerhouse store chain in

493-529: The early 1990s. The total number of customers supplied by the board was: The amount of electricity, in GWh, sold by Midlands Electricity Board was: In 1990, as part of the privatisation of the UK electricity industry, the board became Midlands Electricity plc. The new business was split up, and sold several times: the supply business to Npower in 1999, the distribution business to GPU Power UK , who continued to use

522-528: The idea of public sector provision of goods and services as inherently inefficient. In 1961, Murray Rothbard wrote: "Any reduction of the public sector, any shift of activities from the public to the private sphere, is a net moral and economic gain." American libertarians and anarcho-capitalists have also argued that the system by which the public sector is funded, namely taxation, is itself coercive and unjust . However, even notable small-government proponents have pushed back on this point of view, citing

551-690: The license area of the previous company SWEB (South West) and Infralec (Wales), and rebranded the Midlands areas WPD West Midlands PLC and WPD East Midlands PLC (previously EMEB ). In 2021, PPL placed Western Power Distribution up for sale, being purchased by National Grid, who as of 21 September 2022 has rebranded the WPD business as National Grid. The distribution business is internally known as National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) to differentiate from National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET). Public sector The public sector , also called

580-533: The means of production may be labelled state socialism . State ownership was recognized by Friedrich Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific as, by itself, not doing away with capitalism, including the process of capital accumulation and structure of wage labor. Engels argued that state ownership of commercial industry would represent the final stage of capitalism, consisting of ownership and management of large-scale production and manufacture by

609-399: The property rights approach based on incomplete contracting (developed by Oliver Hart and his co-authors), ownership matters because it determines what happens in contingencies that were not considered in prevailing contracts. The work by Hart, Shleifer and Vishny (1997) is the leading application of the property rights approach to the question whether state ownership or private ownership

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638-586: The public infrastructure. Rates of pay for public sector staff may be negotiated by employers and their staff or staff representatives such as trade unions . In some cases, for example in the United Kingdom, a pay review body is charged with making independent recommendations on rates of pay for groups of public sector staff. As of 2017, France had 5.6 million civil servants , amounting to 20% of all jobs in France. They are subdivided into three types:

667-488: The public sector are either part of the private sector or voluntary sector . The private sector is composed of the economic sectors that are intended to earn a profit for the owners of the enterprise. The voluntary, civic, or social sector concerns a diverse array of non-profit organizations emphasizing civil society . In the United Kingdom, the term "wider public sector" is often used, referring to public sector organizations outside central government. The organization of

696-491: The public sector can take several forms, including: A borderline form is as follows: Infrastructure includes areas that support both the public's members and the public sector itself. Streets and highways are used both by those who work for the public sector and also by the citizenry. The former, who are public employees, are also part of the citizenry. Public roads , bridges , tunnels , water supply , sewers , electrical grids and telecommunication networks are among

725-484: The state's management policies, though these rights are not property rights as they are not transmissible. For example, if a family is allocated an apartment that is state owned, it will have been granted a tenancy of the apartment, which may be lifelong or inheritable, but the management and control rights are held by various government departments . There is a distinction to be made between state ownership and public property. The former may refer to assets operated by

754-513: The state. Within the United Kingdom, public ownership is mostly associated with the Labour Party (a centre-left democratic socialist party), specifically due to the creation of Clause IV of the "Labour Party Manifesto" in 1918. "Clause IV" was written by Fabian Society member Sidney Webb . When ownership of a resource is vested in the state, or any branch of the state such as a local authority , individual use "rights" are based on

783-527: The state. State ownership is advocated as a form of social ownership for practical concerns, with the state being seen as the obvious candidate for owning and operating the means of production. Proponents assume that the state, as the representative of the public interest , would manage resources and production for the benefit of the public. As a form of social ownership, state ownership may be contrasted with cooperatives and common ownership. Socialist theories and political ideologies that favor state ownership of

812-405: The ultimate necessity of a public sector for provision of certain services, such as national defense, public works and utilities, and pollution controls. Public ownership 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 . This form is often referred to as

841-413: The ‘a Midlands Electricity company’ tagline for a couple of years, and then sold to Aquila , under whose short ownership it was renamed Aquila Networks, before being purchased by Powergen in 2004, becoming Central Networks , part of E.ON . The company was then sold in 2011 to American utilities company PPL who owns the UK distribution company Western Power Distribution , who were already operating in

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