Archives: September2009

• Number and Size Distribution of Buyers

  Interest in the number and size distribution of firms on the buying side of the market has a along tradition in economics, although it generates less publicity than condition related to market power on the supply side. An important influence here is the theory of countervailing power. The gist of this theory is that concentration [...]

• Structure-Conduct-Performance

  Economists’ concern with the private exercise of market power goes back at least to Adam Smith, who wrote:
  People of the same trade seldom meet together. Even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
  Economists who shared this concern developed what has come [...]