Private ownership and competitive markets are normally thought to go hand in hand, but the two issues of ownership and market structure are often separate. For the economist devoted to both, the question then arises as to which object of affection is more beloved: private ownership or competition. Here a difference of opinion appears among economists that corresponds to a preference for either privatization or liberalization. Those who believe that efficient performance depends on private ownership per se favor privatization, even in cases generally regarded as natural monopolies. Conversely, those who see competition as the critical spur to efficiency are more skeptical about the benefits of privatizing monopolies and often put more emphasis on other policies, such as deregulation. In the case of a government telecommunications monopoly, for example, those who stress ownership may be willing to privatize the monopoly intact, whereas those who stress competition may prefer to break it up before sale or even to keep it in public ownership while allowing private firms to compete with it on equal terms.