Evolution of monopoly regulation

Abstract

The monopolistic organization of markets is as deeply rooted as the competitive one. It requi­res market actors to take this into consideration. It requires national regulators to counteract it or at least to restrict the freedom of monopolists to the extent that they cannot abuse their market power and negatively affect public welfare. Both the ways of monopolization and the ways of counteracting it are evolving, constantly upset­ting the balance between competition and mono­poly, requiring new ways of regulating mono­polies. The authors research the evolution of monopoly regulation: from spot prohibitions of anticompetitive practices in ancient times to the systemic balancing of competitive and state mechanisms of monopoly regulation today. The article is systematized all approaches to mono­po­ly regulation into three groups, such as: antitrust regulation as control and counteraction to abuse of dominant position by a monopolist; direct regulation of permitted monopolies, including licensing, price regulation and regula­tion of access to a key resource; structural reform of monopolistic industries and introduce­tion of competition in the potentially competitive segments of it – outside the bottleneck in the value chain, where a key resource of a permitted monopoly is exploited. The combination of the theoretical foundations of state monopoly regulation with the practice of such regulation within each approach illustrates the synergy of their joint application and opens up prospects for their exploitation not only for traditional forms of monopoly, but also for neo-monopolies that are emerged in the digital unregulated sector