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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator

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To: Charles Hughes who wrote (20078)6/17/1998 10:44:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton  Read Replies (2) of 24154
 
A "natural" monopoly is simply a monopoly in an industry where, due to efficiencies of scale and other factors, the industry is most efficient, and consumers best off, if there is only one producer. The classic examples of a natural monopoly are the electric utility and the railroad.

The market of a natural monopolist may be contestable, limiting the natural monopolist's ability to raise prices and reduce output from competitive levels. For example, thanks to the trucking industry, railroads cannot charge as much as they could otherwise because people will simply ship their freight by truck instead of train.

Antitrust law is ordinarily not the best policy tool for dealing with natural monopoly because breaking up the natural monopoly is inefficient. Indeed, I would argue that regulation of predatory behavior by a natural monopolist can also be inefficient, an idea which is, to say the least, counterintuitive. (In one of my posts a while back, I went through some economic analysis on this issue as applied to Microsoft.) The best tool in the case of a natural monopolist is some sort of direct regulation by which the government will regulate prices and set them at something close to competitive levels while leaving the business structure of the natural monopoly in place.

Or, you could do what Microsoft wants, and just leave it alone. ;)

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