Governments promote and regulate natural monopolies in order to:

Why is it in the best interest of the government to regulate natural monopolies?

One argument for having the government regulate natural monopolies is that without regulation:

Describe an example of a real-world industry or market that would be considered by economists to be a natural monopoly.

a. What characteristics of the industry make it a monopoly?
b. What is the impact of the monopoly power on its customers?
c. Why might government want to regulate natural monopolies?
d. How might such regulation be structured?