自然垄断、竞争与规制——兼论我国自然垄断行业规制改革的方向

Natural Monopoly,Competition and Regulation

由于自然垄断导致市场失灵,因此从19世纪末开始,以美国为代表的许多国家都对自然垄断行业实行了全面规制。但实践证明,规制并不是提高效率的一种最优方法,因为规制本身也存在失灵问题,加之日益渗透的竞争压力对自然垄断性的慢慢削弱,使得西方后来出现了普遍放松规制的运动。但放松规制并不等于放弃规制,而如何在规制与放松规制间寻找一个最优均衡点,是规制理论至今还没有很好解决的问题。

Since the end of 19th century, many western countries, especially the United States, have adopted regulation to guide natural monopoly industry because it has caused market failure. However, it has been proved that regulation is not the optimal way to improve efficiency, because regulation might fail, and natural monopoly has been gradually weakened due to increasing competition. Therefore many western countries have gradually loosened the regulation. In spite of this,loosening regulation does not mean to give up regulation. How to find an optimal balance between regulation and deregulation is still a problem.