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Full-Text Articles in History
Coase, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Coase, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
This brief essay considers the career, contributions, and influence of Ronald Coase, who passed away in September, 2013. Comments are welcome.
The Wires Go To War: The U.S. Experiment With Government Ownership Of The Telephone System During World War I, Michael A. Janson, Christopher S. Yoo
The Wires Go To War: The U.S. Experiment With Government Ownership Of The Telephone System During World War I, Michael A. Janson, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
One of the most distinctive characteristics of the U.S. telephone system is that it has always been privately owned, in stark contrast to the pattern of government ownership followed by virtually every other nation. What is not widely known is how close the United States came to falling in line with the rest of the world. For the one-year period following July 31, 1918, the exigencies of World War I led the federal government to take over the U.S. telephone system. A close examination of this episode sheds new light into a number of current policy issues. The history confirms …