The existence and the use of the essential facilities doctrine was questioned in theory and in practice. Although the doctrine was developed in antitrust, it became a frequently cited notion in the regulation of network utilities. Its relevance is hotly debated during the setup of the new...

The United States federal government preempted anti-competitive state and municipal telegraph regulations when the 1866 Post Roads Act was enacted. The act granted a de facto national franchise to build and operate a telegraph system anywhere in the United States to any telegraph company...

For the past several years, we have presented and published studies based on postal related data, from postmaster cash books and the Official Register, where we use postmaster salary data as a measure of local, highly disaggregate proxies for general economic activity at town and village level....