Monopoly politics : competition and learning in the evolution of policy regimes / Erik Peinert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peinert, Erik, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Monopolies--Government policy.

Monopolies.

Monopolies--Government policy--France.

Monopolies--Government policy--United States.

France.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"In Monopoly Politics, Erik Peinert provides a macro-historical explanation for why American and international markets are today monopolized by an ever-narrowing group of companies. Using original archival evidence from the United States and France, and borrowing insights from microeconomics, bureaucratic politics, sociology, psychology, and law, Peinert demonstrates how government policy towards competition and monopoly changes at key moments in the 20th century. Centrally, policy changes as a result of the interaction between staff turnover in policy circles and the diminishing returns to policy regimes.As policy regimes across different arenas such as antitrust, intellectual property, trade, and industrial policy push consistently either in favor of competition or monopoly, they generate diminishing returns. Unsustainably pushing for competition suppresses profits and destabilizes markets, whereas pushing to defend market power will raise prices, stifle innovation, and concentrate profits in stagnant monopolies. However, with policy regimes locked in by committed policymakers who have invested time, reputation, or the careers into implementing one approach to policy, government policy only changes through their replacement with non-committed officials willing to reconsider policy. Examining policy change in the United States and France over the 20th century, and leveraging tens of thousands of archival documents, Peinert traces new policy ideas or frameworks through each government, from the site of the original insight to final decision-making, showing the economic research, theories, and interests that motivated the policy discussions "in the room," and the key considerations influencing final policy choices"-- Provided by publisher.

Motivated by the contemporary extremes of monopoly power in the United States and globally, this book uses an in-depth comparison of the United States and France to understand a broad historical question: why does government policy in many industrialized countries tend to alternate between favouring price competition for decades at a time and then favouring market power of incumbent companies for decades?

Contents:

Introduction : The monopoly problem in the long run

Understanding and explaining the internal evolution of policy regimes

Monopoly, the New Deal, and the postwar policy order

Ententes and national champions in postwar France

Nixon, the Chicago School, and the trust-busting state

The return of American monopoly power

The cartelized economy and the end of statism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed November 28, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Peinert, Erik. Monopoly politics.

ISBN:

9780197789544

0197789544

9780197789537

0197789536

9780197789520

0197789528

OCLC:

1517630044

Publisher Number:

CIPO000231802

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license