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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.
A legal monopoly, statutory monopoly, or de jure monopoly is a monopoly that is protected by law from competition. A statutory monopoly may take the form of a government monopoly where the state owns the particular means of production or government-granted monopoly where a private interest is protected from competition such as being granted exclusive rights to offer a particular service in a ...
It is a monopoly created, owned, and operated by the government. It is usually distinguished from a government-granted monopoly, where the government grants a monopoly to a private individual or company. A government monopoly may be run by any level of government—national, regional, local; for levels below the national, it is a local monopoly.
Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U.S. 375 (1905) the antitrust laws entitled the federal government to regulate monopolies that had a direct impact on commerce; Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911) Standard Oil was dismantled into geographical entities given its size, and that it was too much of a monopoly
In an unregulated market, monopolies can potentially be ended by new competition, breakaway businesses, or consumers seeking alternatives. In a regulated market, a government will often either regulate the monopoly, convert it into a publicly owned monopoly environment, or forcibly fragment it (see Antitrust law and trust busting).
For example, in most countries, regulation controls the sale and consumption of alcohol and prescription drugs, as well as the food business, provision of personal or residential care, public transport, construction, film and TV, etc. Monopolies, especially those that are difficult to abolish (natural monopoly), are often regulated.
The rule was later applied by Marcel Boiteux (1956) to natural monopolies (industries with decreasing average cost). A natural monopoly earns negative profits if it sets price equals to marginal cost, so it must set prices for some or all of the products it sells to above marginal cost if it is to be viable without government subsidies. Ramsey ...
Government-granted monopolies often closely resemble government monopolies in many respects, but the two are distinguished by the decision-making structure of the monopolist. In a government monopoly, the holder of the monopoly is the government itself and the group of people who make business decisions is an agency under the government's ...