On Monopoly

With the accelerating of improvement of socialist market economy system, all circles of society have been paying much more attention to the legislation of "antimonopoly law".In China, the study of the theory on monopoly and the policy of antimonopoly from the perspective of law and economics is more than a part of the research on economic law. So the study of monopoly in the economics perspective lacks an in-depth and systematic discussion, which undermines the debating quality of the legislation of "anti-monopoly law".In the dissertation, the clue is to comb the origin and tradition of monopoly, straighten up the evolution of the theory on competition and monopoly, respectively compare the main methods to analyze monopoly and examine the problems and contentions in carrying out varied antimonopoly policies. The paper makes a "meta-theoretical" study of the history of monopoly doctrines and antimonopoly policy from the angle of both the idealistic history of monopoly and some main analyzing approaches.Based on trimming the theoretical history of western economics, the dissertation sums up and expounds diverging arguments about the definition of monopoly, differing analyzing approaches and varied antimonopoly policies, then comes to the conclusion that monopoly in economic life does not exist and points that it is questionable to regulate monopoly in economic field.After tracing the original definition of monopoly and its past legacies, the dissertation justifies that the concept of monopoly comes from the unwritten law of England. After several hundreds of years, the concept evolves from a franchise granted by the King to a manifold notions including monopolist, the market structure of monopoly, the monopolistic situation and behaviors and so on. Meanwhile the case law by courts making verdicts on antimonopoly also injects the theory of monopoly with more diversified fresh judging principles and standards. By studying many original definitions of monopoly, the author argues that it is impossible to define economic monopoly in a market economy, and what can only be defined is such a form of monopoly as administrative one resulting in restricts to market competition because of some official authorization. Through examining some typical antimonopoly policies, the paper points that in essence, economic monopoly is accordant with competition, and antimonopoly policy toward economic monopoly is as always affixed with some political and sociological reasons and any pure anti-monopolistic regulation toward economic monopoly does not exist or is inadequate with reasons. The paper concludes that in the course of improving the socialist market economy in China, it is arguable to make "antimonopoly law" against economic monopoly.Through reviewing the various economic doctrines in the past, the author studies the evolution of the theory of competition and monopoly to clear up some major doctrines of monopoly and distinctions between them.The dissertation classifies the analyzing approaches to monopoly into three types, namely...