ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that during the transition period to market economies, antitrust scrutiny may in some circumstances offer an effective and reasonably low-cost method of restraining undue exercise of market power by firms in the "infrastructure" sectors. Policy analysis for infrastructure industries in former socialist countries will differ from policy analysis for those industries in developed countries because of the current economic condition of former socialist countries. It is a standard result of welfare economics that, in general, this sort of income redistribution policy would be effected more efficiently through direct transfers of purchasing power or targeted subsidies than through broad subsidization of the price of particular goods. Policy-makers can protect against the inefficient, anticompetitive, and unfair use of the regulatory process to subsidize unregulated operations by requiring that regulated firms sell off unregulated operations in those instances where this would not entail a huge sacrifice of scale or scope economies.
