This research explores how salt monopoly, a widespread but costly institution in the pre-modern world, induced mafia-type secret societies in Qing China. Constructing a panel dataset comprising 1638 counties and using salt price regulation as a policy shock, I find that the enforcement of salt...

While private monopolists are generally assumed to maximize profits, the goals of public enterprises are less well known. Using the example of Pennsylvania's state liquor retailing monopoly, we use information on store location choices, prices, wholesale costs, and sales to uncover the goals...

To date, China has maintained a variety of restrictions on its financial markets. In addition to imposing capital controls and regulating interest rates, the government controls both the set of firms that can sell equity on the domestic or foreign stock markets, and the amount they can sell....

We examine the patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world. We find that almost universally the largest media firms are owned by the government or by private families. Government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media. Government ownership of the...

This book offers a novel explanation of the transformation of London’s transport from a free market to a public corporation rooted in social and political legitimacy rather than economic rationality. To become a single corporation London Transport first had to gain a ‘social licence’ to...

In this paper we study the ability of the 19-th century Italian government to choose profit maximising prices for a multiproduct monopolist. We use very detailed historical data on the tobacco consumption in 62 Italian provinces from 1871 to 1888 to estimate a differentiated product demand...

Money, in this paper, is defined as a power relationship of a specific kind, a stratified social debt relationship, measured in a unit of account determined by some authority. A brief historical examination reveals its evolving nature in the process of social provisioning. Money not only...

Money, in this paper, is defined as a power relationship of a specific kind, a stratified social debt relationship, measured in a unit of account determined by some authority. A brief historical examination reveals its evolving nature in the process of social provisioning. Money not only...

In 1893 South Carolina prohibited the private manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol and established a state monopoly in wholesale and retail alcohol distribution. The combination of a market decline in the availability of alcohol, reduced variety, and monopoly pricing at...

In 1893 South Carolina prohibited the private manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol and established a state monopoly in wholesale and retail alcohol distribution. The combination of a market decline in the availability of alcohol, reduced variety, and monopoly pricing at...

This chapter discusses the “seigniorage argument” in favor of public money issuance, according to which public finances could be improved if the state more fully exercised the privilege of money creation, which is, today, largely shared with private banks. This point was made in the 1930s by...

Deregulation and decentralization in the electricity sector have thrived worldwide since the early 1980s. China also started restructuring its electricity industry since the mid-1980s. The reform shares many common features with restructuring practices in other countries and exhibits some unique...

Around the turn of the century, the gas market in the Netherlands underwent a drastic shift in governance. Although the gas value chain was initially designed as a natural monopoly, it was dismantled by introducing competition on the basis of two European Union (EU) Directives that allowed third...

This working paper focuses on an aspect of governance that is crucial to the next phase of China's development: reducing state monopolies in order to enhance economic efficiency and promote more equitable growth. It is important to note that monopoly control in the Chinese political economy is...

This is an essay on the interconnection between different sets of EU rules when deciding a single case. The overlap between EU fundamental freedoms and EU competition rules consists in a continuous challenge posed to EU courts which is resolved in a case by case manner. This casuistic treatment...

In Greece, the provision of tertiary education is permitted, by the constitution, only to ‘public’ institutions where faculty and administrators are civil servants and public officials respectively. We construct an argument and present statistical data that describe the situation observed in...

In this paper I first provide an overview of alternative approaches to money, contrasting the orthodox approach, in which money is neutral, at least in the long run; and the Marx-Veblen-Keynes approach, or the monetary theory of production. I then focus in more detail on two main categories: the...