On the origins of the concept of natural monopoly: Economies of scale and competitionFootnote∗

 ∗ A first draft of this paper was presented at the III annual meeting of Storep (Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Economia Politica) in Lecce, Italy in June 2006; at the 2006 annual meeting of the History of Economics Society in Grinnell, USA in June 2006; at the Department of Economics, University of Lecce, Italy in July 2006; and at the meeting of the Association for Public Economic Theory (PET06) in Hanoi, Vietnam in August 2006. An earlier version was published as Working Paper No. 92/45 by the Department of Economics, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.

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