Welfare aspects of industrial markets

The present volume of essays on industrial organization, which are based on conferences held at Nijenrode and Brussels, differs considerably from its predecessor. Even more than in the first volume the essays demonstrate the broad scope of industrial organization analysis. Besides the traditional topics such as economies of scale, monopoly and competition policy, there are essays on methodology, on stagflation, and on the relationship between industrial struc ture and international trade and trade policies. The latter topics are of growing importance. The issue of restructuring industries and the question of whether free trade or some measure of protection is more appropriate are topics of increasing relevance today (and will no doubt continue to be in future years as well). The problem of persistent inflation which other essays address is also of major concern. Apart from being broad in scope and venturing into new fields, this volume is also controversial. Its central feature is a debate about welfare aspects. Here, more than in pure analysis, economists tend to entertain different points of view. One of the participants in the Nijenrode conference, Professor John Blair, who died in December 1976 and whom we honour as having been an active promoter of this kind of meeting, wrote to the editors shortly before his death to say that the first volume had succeeded very well in acquainting the reader with the results of empirical investigations, notably on trends and levels of concentration.

Contenu
One Theoretical and Statistical Questions in Industrial Organization.- I. Theory comes to industrial organization.- II. The dominant firm in relation to market structure.- III. The ownership and control of industry.- Two Stagflation and Industrial Structure.- IV. Inflation and competition.- V. Oligopoly and inflation.- VI. Stagflation problems in a workers' self-management socialist economy: the Yugoslav case.- Three The International Economy and Industrial Organization.- VII. International trade and industrial organization: some statistical evidence.- VIII. Large industrial firms of the Atlantic community: production methods, asset finance, profitability, and growth.- IX. Import quotas and industrial performance.- X. UK industry and the world economy: a case of de-industrialization?.- Four Monopoly and Economies of Scale.- XI. Monopoly welfare gains and the costs of decentralization.- XII. Economies as an antitrust defense revisited.- XIII. Economies of scale, industrial structure and efficiency: the brewing industry in nine nations.- XIV. Economies of scale and technological change: an international comparison of blast furnace technology.- Five Industrial Policies.- XV. An investigation into the effectiveness of a capital market sanction on poor performance.- XVI. The abolition of cartels and structural change in the United Kingdom.- XVII. The regulation and control of public utility prices: British experience 19601975.- XVIII. French antitrust legislation: an exercise in futility.- Index/.