In foreshadowing partial privatisation of some SOEs and Air New Zealand, the government is placing emphasis on the case for reducing debt. There was a similar emphasis in the privatisations of the late 1980s.
This case is valid but it is a secondary argument. The main argument is about economic efficiency: that on average and over time, privately owned enterprises out-perform publicly owned ones (and hence contribute more to national income).
For some years the most commonly cited meta-study in support of this view was a 2001 Journal of EconomicLiterature (JEL) article by Megginson and Netter. The JEL is the leading economic journal for survey articles of this kind. As summarised by Phil Barry in his report for the Business Roundtable, the paper found that:
- of the ten studies examining the relative efficiency of private and public enterprises operating in the same industry, eight studies found the private sector…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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