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Making a natural monopoly : the configuration of a techno-economic order in Swedish telecommunications

Natural economic orders are made and unmade. Industries such as telecommunications, rail transportation, and electricity distribution are prime examples. In the last two decades we have witnessed the widespread unmaking of these long established public natural monopolies. This study focuses its attention on the state-owned monopoly in Swedish telecommunications which became complete in 1918 and prevailed until the beginning of the 1980s. Given the present widely-held understanding that this was a natural monopoly eventually unmade by technological change, this study asks how this natural monopoly once emerged. The study concentrates on the creation and the technological and economic stabilisation of a national state-owned monopoly in telephony in Sweden during the period 1903 - 1930. At the centre is the termination of competition in telephony in Stockholm in 1918. The study is devoted to a detailed investigation into the various controversies whose eventual settlement led to the creation of the monopoly and the introduction of automatic exchanges, a central theme in the stabilisation of the monopoly. Focusing on techno-economic controversies, this study presents a perceptive approach to the inquiry into order and change in industries, allowing for an inclusion of how notions of the natural order and the inevitable change are made and sustained within such fields of economic practice. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 1999

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hhs-635
Date January 1999
CreatorsHelgesson, Claes-Fredrik
PublisherHandelshögskolan i Stockholm, Marknadsföring, Distributionsekonomi och Industriell Dynamik (D), Stockholm : Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics (Ekonomiska forskningsinstitutet vid Handelshögsk.) (EFI)
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral thesis, monograph, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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