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...

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...

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...

Modern microeconomics foundations of industrial regulation policies were developed during the second half of the 19th century. One of the main theoretical and applied debates which is still an issue today concerns natural monopolies. Railroads were at the center of these debates, because of...

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...

A monopolist in public transport may oversupply frequency relative to the social optimum, as van Reeven (2008) demonstrates with homogeneous consumers. This result generalizes for heterogeneous consumers who know the timetable. Whether a monopolist oversupplies or undersupplies frequency depends...

A monopolist in public transport may oversupply frequency relative to the social optimum, as Van Reeven (2008) demonstrates with homogeneous consumers. This result generalizes for heterogeneous consumers who know the timetable. Whether a monopolist oversupplies or undersupplies frequency depends...

A monopolist in public transport may oversupply frequency relative to the social optimum, as van Reeven (2008) demonstrates with homogeneous consumers. This result generalizes for heterogeneous consumers who know the timetable. Whether a monopolist oversupplies or undersupplies frequency depends...