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This book originated at a meeting of American and European specialists in in dustrial organization, at the Instituut voor Bedrijfskunde, Nijenrode (The Netherlands) in August, 1974. The conference endeavored to bring together re searchers in a field where, paradoxically, the underlying phenomena studied are increasingly coordinated and internationalized, yet the observers remain pre dominantly isolated. Only rarely do they resort to comparisons between coun tries, and still less frequently to an analysis from a transnational outlook. As the contributions to this collection demonstrate, it has become clearer and clearer that -whether or not as a result of a random process, or of technological conditions, or of deliberate enterprise strategy - the determinants of market structures and their changes as time passes, have created fundamentally similar effects in different countries, resulting in industrial structures of the same kind. Thus, the largest firms and plants are found in the same sectors, and the most concentrated industries are more or less the same from one country to the other. The studies of Prais, Reid, Jacquemin & Phlips and Linda likewise show that a broad trend toward concentration has been manifest.
List of contents
One Conceptual and Methodological Problems.- I. The determinants of market structure: designs for research.- II. International comparisons in the study of industrial organization.- III. Power and competition.- Two Concentration, Mergers and Performance in the E.E.C..- I. Concentration, size and performance of European firms.- II. Large and small manufacturing enterprises in Europe and America.- III. Theory and evidence concerning mergers: an international comparison.- IV. The causes and effects of mergers.- V. Static and dynamic methods for analysing industrial concentration: the Italian case.- Three Big Corporations and Market Structures in the U.S..- I. The elements and evolution of market structure.- II. Private planning and social efficiency.- Four The Impact of the Multinational Corporation.- I. Systemic instability and the global corporation at home: The role of power in economic analysis.- II. Industrial policy and the structural impact of multinational firms: an analytical view.- III. Theoretical elements for an introduction to petroleum economics.- Five Some Policy Aspects.- I. Concerted action as an aspect of oligopolistic behaviour and its treatment in competition policy.- II. Perfect and free competition as guiding principles in competition policy towards large enterprises.- III. Industrial structure and price/wage controls: the U.S. experience.
