• DOI:10.3386/W0055
• Corpus ID: 227319995

Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation

@article{Posner1975SocialCO,
  title={Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation},
  author={Richard A. Posner},
  journal={Journal of Political Economy},
  year={1975},
  volume={83},
  pages={807-827}
}

• R. Posner
• Published 1 August 1975
• Economics
• Journal of Political Economy

This paper presents a model and some highly tentative empirical estimates of the social costs of monopoly and monopoly-inducing regulation in the United States. Unlike the previous studies, it assumes that competition to obtain a monopoly results in the transformation of expected monopoly profits into social costs. A major conclusion is that public regulation is probably a larger source of social costs than private monopoly. The implications of the analysis for several public policy issues, such as appropriate policy toward mergers and price discrimination, are also discussed.