Monopoly

The research behind this look at MTV is solid and groundbreaking...it's a shame the book went out of print..it is timeless.

This is perhaps the only graduate textbook on Natural Monopoly Regulation available. Unfortunately, it's available only in libraries, as it went out of print soon after it was published. The company has no known plans of reprint, which is a real disaster for all graduate students of the field.

This textbook is comprehensive, modelling-based, rigorous, and yet maintains connection with the realities of the peculiar regulated markets in question. This implies that not only pure theoretical models are discussed and analyzed, but also the specific regulations are embedded into presentation.

Despite the fact that the book was written in late 80s, it still serves as an invaluable reference. I wish it were in print...

Ravi Ramamurti once again demostrates his uncanny ability to describe complex economic situations with ease. An must-read for anyone interested in the subject

First, Want to know the arguments against the statements that follow? Then read this book.
1.USPS should be granted greater flexibility to compete against UPS, FedEx, and the like.
2.A monopoly is necessary to preserve universal service.
3. USPS should subsidize mail delivery costs by using revenues from additional product lines.
4.USPS should become a profit center for the federal government.
Second, it's interesting to note how much USPS's approach has changed, probably in response to concerns such as expressed in this book, since just 1995, when the research for this book was performed. For example, this book keeps alluding to "postal losses,'" which is a reminder of just how recently it has been since USPS started making money.
Third, Chapter 2 includes the best description of the Private Express Statutes (the Statutes say that only USPS can deliver mail) that I've ever read (although I haven't read much about them). Succinctly put, Chapter 2 says: the Statutes apply to letters, but, what is a "letter," and who defines it?
I am a USPS employee, and I read Postal Link (An In-house publication that includes letters on any subject from readers).

William Wooldridge's "Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man" is a must read for all those exploring the ideas of liberty. The reason is quite simple. He makes the case for liberty totally reasonable by removing it from the notion of THEORY. He gives us a history in the US where minting money, running schools, moving mail, police and other activities which the government currently mopnopolizes, have been done perfectly well by private individuals!
And he shows why. He writes with a smooth, clear style and when you are done, you come away convinced that the US government school system has cheated you of important history.
When read in conjunction with Rand or Rothbard, you have a terrific intellectual punch. Plus it's packed with light humor.
Sincerely, Fred James

In this crisply written mix of history and clear theory, Mueller retells the history of early competition in telephony -- and of the role of regulation in making the AT&T monopoly. The book brings to life a completely forgotten period, where telephones were like computer operating systems today -- competing yet incompatible. Not every phone could be called from every phone, and this fact, Mueller convincingly argues, pushed competition in telephone penetration.

The book also is convincing in its account of the reconstruction of the meaning of the word "universal service" which was brought about, Mueller argues, by AT&T revisionism in the 1970s. The original meaning was simply that any phone would be able to call any phone; the modern meaning (that some service subsidizes other service) was a construction of a late monopoly trying to defend itself.

The book suggests wonderful (if under developed) parallels with the story of competition in modern operating systems. And it offers some important skepticism about the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

A fascinating account of telephone competition in the early 1900s, when the competing telephone systems did not connect. Mueller's analysis of the experience of a fragmented telecommunications infrastructure--and the decision to put an end to it in the name of "universal service"--has important implications for Internet and telecom development today. John Crook

Christopher Pike is not your run-of-the mill intellectual property adviser. Although qualified as a patent and trade mark attorney, his experience in dealing with business management issues comes through very directly when reading this book.
It is not always appreciated that there is a whole host of available strategies for businesses which are, knowingly and in some cases not, involved in generating intellectual property. Intellectual property generators often need commercially minded guidance appropriate to their markets and their approach to business as to how their intellectual property can be used to create value. Pike has identified and crystallised models and concepts in a way which makes the grander themes of intellectual property, often held as an impenetrable area for those outside its day-to-day practice, readily understandable. He sets out a useful vocabulary of concepts and terms, describing intellectual property as a currency used in buy-sell relations and for measuring creative advantage.
I suspect that Pike may be at the forefront of a new area of consulting which is much-needed but so-far overlooked. The book he has written will surely be a useful tool to a broad range of readers, particularly those looking for insight into modern approaches to intellectual property strategy. Whilst other books on IP may be found hidden in the law section of a bookshop, this will almost certainly be found in amongst the bestselling management books.

Jerome Spaargaren, Director, Electronic Intellectual Property, London.

Who Owns America? is a collection of informative, challenging, iconoclastic and articulate essays on the nature of industrialism, corporate capitalism, the bureaucratic state, private property, the "good" society, and neo-Jeffersonian visions of a decentralized America. From David Cushman Coyle's "The Fallacy of Mass Production", to Frank Lawrence Owsley's "The Foundations of Democracy", to James Muir Waller's "America and Foreign Trade", to Robert Penn Warren's Literature as a Symptom", to Hilaire Belloc's "The Modern Man", these and many more observant and insightful commentaries deserve as wide a readership as possible and are highly recommended to students of American politics, economics, and history.

I have read this book a few times because there is so much in it and I didn't want to forget the details. Ralph Anspach has a gift for telling a story in a way that puts you right in the middle of the action. You get to read about how an Economics Professor invented a board game and all the trials he went through to get it to market. Then you read how Parker Brothers could not stand this harmless little game and did everything they could to ban it from being sold. In self-defense, Ralph Anspach looked into the real history of the game, meeting the people and visiting the places where monopoly was invented years before it's claimed "invention" by Charles Darrow in 1935. The invention fraud pales in comparison to the cover-up that Parker Brothers carried out in order to line their pockets and monopolize the board game industry - and you, the consumer, got to pay for it in higher prices and inferior products. As the battle rages on we find Kenneth Starr in his pre-Lewinski days and some of America's biggest companies gang-up to rid the world of Anti-Monopoly once-and-for-all. How did this immigrant professor become such a threat to big business capitalism? The answers are masterfully revealed in this book that will keep you smiling and reading all through the night. Scandal, money-hungry, bloodthirsty business, a monopoly detective and more...it's all here.

Any fan of the Monopoly game or one of the many versions of the game available today will be intrigued by the origin of this fantastic game as told by Anspach through his investigations. The David vs. Goliath battle with the "Microsofts" of the Toy industry, the various owners of Parker Brothers through to Hasbro, Inc. (the current owners), shows how Monopoly is not just their game, but their mission statement and general business goal. Required reading for anyone who ever read The Monopoly Book or The Monopoly Companion.

This is a wonderful tale of Goliath from David's point of view -- you'll be amazed at what an American business will do to defend its false patent, and it would be downright unbelievable in fiction that a judge would do what a judge actually did -- but you have to believe it because it's there in the court records.

Written with self-effacing humor, this book is a fast and pleasurable read. Unfortunately there's quite a lot of misplaced punctuation (especially quotation marks) that distract from the flow -- but aside from that I find no flaws worth mentioning. Recommended to everyone who's ever played Monopoly (so you can find out what the game you've been playing is *really* about).