The basis of this study is to attempt to throw light on some of the problems arising from the public ownership of industrial enterprise through making a comparative examination of the records of public and private ownership in the gas and electricity industries before nationalisation.
The plan of the study is to examine first of all the phenomenon of municipal 'trading' enterprise, studying its development, and considering it In relation to other municipal services. Then the genera’ structure of the gas and electricity industries is described. After this the main comparisons are attempted, under the headings of efficiency; financial policy; location policy; and administration. (In studying the difficult problem of the relative levels of efficiency achieved under public and private ownership in these two industries some attention is given to the meaning of the word efficiency itself and to evaluating the significance of the different methods of making efficiency measurements)
