company by revenues in the United States, and by that measure the largest telecommunications company in

the world. Economists have spent – and will still spend – years trying to determine whether the merger of

AT&T and BellSouth, as well as other smaller mergers of telecommunications companies at about this same

time, helped consumers, hurt them, or did not make much difference.

This chapter discusses public policy issues about competition. How can economists and governments

determine when mergers of large companies like AT&T and BellSouth should be allowed and when they should

be blocked? The government also plays a role in policing anticompetitive behavior other than mergers, like

prohibiting certain kinds of contracts that might restrict competition. In the case of natural monopoly,

however, trying to preserve competition probably will not work very well, and so government will often resort
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