Monopoly Rent
Some returns are associated with legally enforced monopolies like patents or copyrights. In addition, companies like Microsoft and Intel have important de facto monopolies that can be quite valuable. The American Medical Association has traditionally regulated the number of students each US medical school can graduate, and by restricting the supply of doctors has been accused of thus increasing the income of doctors. Some businesses like public utilities are by their very nature monopolies. George Stigler estimated the impact of monopoly rent on the US economy to be fairly low, but he specially excluded labor monopolies from his studies.
Read more about this topic: Economic Rent
Famous quotes containing the words monopoly and/or rent:
“Unless you become more watchful in your states and check the spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that ... the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)