Examines the sources of increased competition in the United States (U.S.) between 1939 to 1980. In this paper authors consider the review of related literature, trends and patterns of competitive structure in the U.S. economy, influence of antirust actions on competition.

HE field of industrial organization has acT quired an abundance of hypotheses about what comprises market structure.1 Neoclassical analysis was premised on the firm's market share, atomistic or pure monopoly. Then came the Chamberlinian group of the 1930's, Bain's entry barriers of the 1950's, and firm size and advertising in the 1960's. This abundance yields vitality, but it has also left uncertain the relative importance and interrelations of the individual structural elements. Empirical analyses, relying mainly on partial tests relating one or two elements with a dimension of behavior, have not resolved the patterns. This paper attempts to compose these differences by fitting models of structure to recent data on large United States industrial corporations. Section I prepares testable models of the elements, both in static and in comparativestatic contexts. Data on a panel of 231 large United States industrial firms during 19601969 are described in section II. Section III presents the empirical analysis, and the results are summarized in section IV.

The inner mechanism of global competition remains much as Adam Smith defined it two centuries ago: nations interact, while seeking to win by gaining higher wealth. Self-interest in gaining wealth drives the process, although wars and other deviations often occur. In this setting, economic concepts of competition, benefit-cost criteria and risk can help in defining efficient choices among policy tools (including military activities). From research using those concepts (my study with Theodora Shepherd, 1986), 1 will discuss several tentative conclusions about the U.S.-USSR rivalry. 1) The global competitive process (let us call it Process 1) has properties which appear to make it stable. 2) The United States and USSR appear to possess inherent security from conquest by each other. 3) Each country's efficient limit on military spending can be analyzed as an analog of payments for insurance, to raise national security. In that context, inherent security reduces the U.S. and USSR's efficient levels of armaments. 4) Military entropy occurs; global wealth is subject to a general process (Process 2) which subtracts it into military forms and warfare.

The exchange of comments between William Shepherd and Michael Smirlock, Thomas Gilligan, and William Marshall (this Review, December 1986) raised two key points that remain unresolved. The first point is whether Tobin's q ratio, a firm's financial market value divided by replacement cost of its assets, is a better measure of firm performance than accounting rates of return. The second point of contention is whether superior performance, however measured, can be attributed to efficiency rather than market power. This paper offers further clarification on both of these points. In Section I the performance measure choice is shown to be influenced by fundamental differences between finance and economics. In Section II, the structure-performance model employed by Smirlock, Gilligan, and Marshall (hereafter, SGM) and Shepherd is shown to be a special case of a more general model allowing for a dependence of the market-share-performance relationship on the concentration ratio. The same data from the original study by SGM (1984) are used in Section III to provide a comparison of SGM's findings with empirical results from an alternative specification of the structure-performance model. This comparison suggests that attributing superior firm performance exclusively to efficiency is not well founded. Concluding remarks are found in Section IV.

Analyzes the ultra-free entry as normative contribution to industrial organization. Ultra-free entry in context of the evolving field of industrial organization; Assessment of the conceptual validity of William Baumol, Elizabeth Bailey John Panzar and Robert Willig's analysis in representing the nature of competition; Empirical issues in measuring and testing ultra-free entry. (Из Ebsco)

RECENT research on employment discrimination against blacks and women suggests that no single determinant education, location, growth, or others is primary. Yet the belief persists (see Alchian and Kessel, 1962; Arrow, 1971; Ashenfeiter, 1969; Becker, 1957; Bergmann, 1971; Comanor, 1971; Shepherd, 1969; Thurow, 1969) that the employers' power to choose may be important, via their managerial preferences and discretionary resources. These influences would be visible in large industrial firms which possess market power. In this paper we test whether the industrial structure and performance of large firms have in fact been related to their employment of blacks and women. The analysis covers about 200 of the largest United States industrial enterprises, using employment data for 1966 and 1970. The focus is on white-collar employment patterns. Being more directly subject to upper management control than is blue-collar employment, the white-collar patterns may provide a sensitive test of whatever role is played by enterprise policy under varying conditions and constraints. First we discuss the basic hypotheses to be tested in section I. Section II explains the variables and the basic models which are to be analyzed. Section III presents the empirical results. And finally, the findings are summarized in section IV.