Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In economics, a government-granted monopoly (also called a "de jure monopoly" or "regulated monopoly") is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of government enforcement.
For example, in some cases, utilities (such as those providing electricity or water) may operate as natural monopolies due to high infrastructure and distribution costs. Technology monopoly: This type of monopoly occurs when one company has exclusive control over a particular technology or innovation, thus enabling them to dominate the market.
A government-granted monopoly or legal monopoly, by contrast, is sanctioned by the state, often to provide an incentive to invest in a risky venture or enrich a domestic interest group. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are sometimes used as examples of government-granted monopolies.
Jirat Teparaksa/Shutterstock.com. 6. De Beers. De Beers is one of the most controversial companies among the biggest monopolies of all time, which is saying something.
The term monopoly privilege rent-seeking is an often-used label for this particular type of rent-seeking. Often-cited examples include a lobby that seeks economic regulations such as tariff protection, quotas, subsidies, [21] or extension of copyright law. [22]
The reason for this is that the courts have endeavoured to draw a line between practices that restrain trade in a "good" compared to a "bad" way. In the first case, United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association , [ 45 ] the Supreme Court found that railroad companies had acted unlawfully by setting up an organisation to fix transport prices.
The United States Postal Service is an example of a coercive monopoly created through laws that ban potential competitors such as UPS or FedEx from offering competing services (in this case, first-class and standard (formerly called "third-class") mail delivery). [14] Government monopolies also mandate taxpayers to subsidize these firms.
Australia is an example that meets this description. [18] A natural monopoly is a firm whose per-unit cost decreases as it increases output; in this situation it is most efficient (from a cost perspective) to have only a single producer of a good. Natural monopolies display so-called increasing returns to scale.