The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation

@article{Posner1975TheSC,
  title={The 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 September 1974
  • 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… 
View on U Chicago Press
nber.org
927 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
22
Background Citations
269
Methods Citations
18
Results Citations
11

927 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Social costs of monopoly and regulation: an empirical evaluation
The author examines the empirical importance of Posner's assumption that scarce resources are consumed without producing social benefits when income is redistributed from users to producers. Applying…
The social costs of monopoly and regulation : a game theoretic analysis
The theory of rent-seeking is that monopoly profits attract resources directed into efforts to obtain these profits and that the opportunity costs of these resources are a social cost of monopoly.…
The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation: Some Comments
  • G. Skogh
  • Economics
    Journal of Political Economy
  • 1976
Richard Posner (1975) has recently presented an interesting alternative to existing estimates of the social costs of monopoly and regulation. His estimates are based on the notion that potential…
The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation: Posner Reconsidered
  • F. Fisher
  • Economics
    Journal of Political Economy
  • 1985
Focuses on social costs of monopoly and trade regulation in the United States. Benefit of marginal changes on antitrust activities; Equality of cost in obtaining monopoly and expected profit of…
The Social Costs of Monopoly: A Survey and an Evaluation
Existence of monopoly and its costs to societies have been intensely studied. However, there has been no clear view obtained yet. Studies of rentseeking approach of the public choice school even make…
Pure Monopoly Model
The classical model of the anti-competitive and socially undesirable monopoly is the pure monopoly model. In this model, the monopolist provides less output—at a higher price—than would be provided…
Dominant firms, price leadership and the measurement of monopoly welfare losses
Monopoly, price discrimination, and rent-seeking
This paper considers the effect of rent-seeking on the welfare implications of price discrimination by a monopolist. It is shown that even when rent-seeking fully dissipates monopoly profits, it is…
The Social Costs of Monopoly and Regulation: Posner Reconsidered Again
Regulation of Natural Monopoly
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and empirical literature on the regulation of natural monopolies. It covers alternative definitions of natural monopoly, public…
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 40 REFERENCES
AN ESTIMATION OF THE “WELFARE LOSSES” FROM MONOPOLY IN THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
Examines the effect of monopoly in the American economy. Misallocation of resources by monopolists; Redistribution of income toward the monopolist; Reduction of aggregate welfare. (Из Ebsco)
The Burden of Monopoly
A MEASUREMENT of the effect of monopoly on price such as I have reported earlier in this Journal' is interesting for its implications for income distribution and resource allocation. The total of…
THE WELFARE COSTS OF TARIFFS, MONOPOLIES, AND THEFT
Evaluates the methods to measure the welfare costs of monopolies and tariffs in the United States. Concerns of the economists; Presentation of equation; Validity of measurements. (Из Ebsco)
The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society
Studies the impact of competitive import licenses on the economy. Value of rents associated with import licenses; Relationship between welfare cost of quantitative restrictions and tariff…
The Statistics of Monopoly and Merger
  • G. Stigler
  • Economics, History
    Journal of Political Economy
  • 1956
T HREE quantitative studies of the monopoly problem in the United States have been made in recent years by Harberger, Kaplan, and Weston. In different ways the studies of Harberger and Kaplan tend to…
Economies as an Anti-Trust Defense: The Welfare Tradeoffs
Suppose that a merger (or other combination) is proposed that yields economies but at the same time increases market power. Can the courts and antitrust agencies safely rely, in these circumstances,…
A Study of the Effects of Competition in the Tax-exempt Bond Market
This is a study of the effects of competition upon underwriting costs, reoffering yields, and the financing costs to issuers of tax-exempt bonds. It provides estimates of the marginal effects of…
Why Regulate Utilities
Current economic doctrine offers to its students a basic relationship between the number of firms that produce for a given market and the degree to which competitive results will prevail. Stated…
Industry Structure, Market Rivalry, and Public Policy
  • H. Demsetz
  • Economics
    The Journal of Law and Economics
  • 1973
UANTITATIVE work in industrial organization has been directed mainly to the task of searching for monopoly even though a vast number of other interesting topics have been available to the student of…
Monopoly and Resource Allocation
This classic 1954 article broke with the then-current economic orthodoxy and set monopoly research on a path that would lead to a strong shift toward empiricism and the development of a more cautious…
...
1
2
3
4
...