American Economic Review Vol. 94 No. 2 2004

What Is a Barrier to Entry?

R. Preston McAfee¹; Hugo M. Mialon²; Michael A. Williams³

¹ Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125. · ² Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322-2240. · ³ ERS Group, 2000 Powell Street, Suite 500, Emeryville, CA 94608.

Abstract

The present article is an attempt to resolve the controversies concerning the concept of barriers to entry. We begin by contrasting the definitions of an entry barrier proposed in the economics literature. We then introduce a classification system to clear up the existing confusion, and we employ it to assess the nature of the barriers posed by scale economies and sunk costs.

DOI

10.1257/0002828041302235

Volume

94

Issue

2

Pages

461-465

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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