本研究旨從經濟性和公共性論點來檢證民營化所能解決的國鐵問題，以及探討此項改革作法所可能產生的限制與困境。由個案經驗發現，民營化政策推動的成果會因事業本身的特質與所處市場環境而有差異。因此，公營事業民營化未能如倡議者所言，能在「經營自主性」、「經營績效」與「服務品質」等經濟面向與「減輕政府財政負擔」的宏觀公共性面向上達到充分的發揮，而產生部分的限制。至於反對論者所擔憂的微觀公共性保障問題，在民營化政策實施二十多年後重新檢視，依然呈現出未能解決的困境。
研究結果發現，從日本鐵路民營化的經驗來探討今後我國如欲推行民營化政策或實施鐵路改革時，應審慎評估基礎建設民營化的矛盾、減輕國家財政負擔、民營化過程中政府職責移轉，以及鐵路事業競爭條件無法平等化等四個面向所可能產生的限制，以避免對該政策的實施成果抱持過多的期待。

This study aims to use economy and publicness perspectives to inspect on the solution that privatization offered to National Railroad problems, and discuss the limitation and obstacles that derived from this reform approach. We could discover from different cases that the results of promoting privatization policy have to take industry characteristics and the market environment into consider. Therefore, the privatization of national enterprises were not able to realized what initiators had stated: in terms of economy, to achieve “Economic Autonomy”, “Economic Performance” and “Service Quality” and to guarantee “the reduce of government financial burden” for the benefit of publicness at a macro-level and produce some limitations. As for the problems of ensuring micro-level publicness that concerned the adversaries, after implementing privatization policy for 20 years, the problems are still left unsolved.
This study shows that when discussing privatization policy or implementing railroad reforms and referring to the experience of National Railroad in Japan, there are four levels of limitation that are caused by privatization and should be examined carefully to avoid excessive expectations for the implementation results: the infrastructure privatization dilemma should be assessed with care, the reduce of national financial burden, the transfer of government responsibilities, and the inequality in requirements of railroad competition.