This chapter directly addresses and confronts the commonly-held belief that public ownership is inherently less economically efficient than private ownership. By conducting an extensive review of the empirical and theoretical literature on this subject, this chapter demonstrates that there is, in fact, no consensus among experts supporting the supposed superiority of private ownership, and in many cases public ownership is as or more efficient once all relevant considerations are taken into account. It also highlights many important economic questions and considerations that are necessary for analysing where and how public ownership might be deployed in any next system beyond corporate capitalism. These include: profits, inequality, different measures of efficiency, employment, social benefit, competition, natural monopoly, the difficulties of comparability, perfect markets, and scale. The chapter further investigates two issues from the economic literature that are especially important to the discussion of public ownership generally— competition and autonomy— and suggests that internal design and external relationships are critical when considering where and how public ownership could or should be scaled up and developed.