Competition and Entrepreneurship defines Israel M. Kirzner's unique contribution to the economics profession. Pointing out the shortcomings of the traditional microeconomic model, Kirzner offers an alternative and complementary view, which illuminates and enriches the way economists think of the market process. Recognizing that economics cannot explain sheer novelty and ultimately social change by referring only to productive factors already in use, Kirzner develops a theory of the market process that focuses on the role of the pure entrepreneurial element in human action. This leads him to reconstruct the theory of price in order to understand, as he puts it, "how the decisions of individual participants in the market interact to generate the market forces which compel changes in prices, outputs, and methods of production and in the allocation of resources." In doing so, Kirzner offers a new appraisal of competition moving the entrepreneurial function back to center stage, thereby shedding new light on issues such as monopoly pricing, cartels, and pure profit. No other economist in recent times has been so closely identified with the Austrian School of economics as Kirzner. A leader of the generation of Austrian economists after Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, Kirzner has been recognized as one of the minds behind the revival of entrepreneurship and market process theory in the twentieth century.

Though competition occupies a prominent place in the history of economic thought, among economists today there is still a limited, and sometimes contradictory, understanding of its impact. In Competition and Growth , Philippe Aghion and Rachel Griffith offer the first serious attempt to provide a unified and coherent account of the effect competition policy and deregulated entry has on economic growth. The book takes the form of a dialogue between an applied theorist calling on "Schumpeterian growth" models and a microeconometrician employing new techniques to gauge competition and entry. In each chapter, theoretical models are systematically confronted with empirical data, which either invalidates the models or suggests changes in the modeling strategy. Aghion and Griffith note a fundamental divorce between theorists and empiricists who previously worked on these questions. On one hand, existing models in industrial organization or new growth economics all predict a negative effect of competition on innovation and growth: namely, that competition is bad for growth because it reduces the monopoly rents that reward successful innovators. On the other hand, common wisdom and recent empirical studies point to a positive effect of competition on productivity growth. To reconcile theory and evidence, the authors distinguish between pre- and post-innovation rents, and propose that innovation may be a way to escape competition, an idea that they confront with microeconomic data. The book's detailed analysis should aid scholars and policy makers in understanding how the benefits of tougher competition can be achieved while at the same time mitigating the negative effects competition and imitation may have on some sectors or industries.

This collection of original essays by economists and lawyers addresses important aspects of antitrust and regulation, such as the U.S. government's merger guidelines, antitrust in regulated industries, the connection between profitability and market share, and the question of what constitutes anticompetitive behavior. The book combines economic and legal analysis to inform policymaking with theory as well as the lessons of experience in the petroleum, electric power, computer, retail food, and telecommunications industries. Antitrust and Regulationopens with John McGowan's previously unpublished background paper, "Mergers for Power or Progress," for the merger guidelines taskforce which recommended the rules adopted by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department in 1982. This is followed by "Competition and Antitrust in the Petroleum Industry: An Application of the Merger Guidelines," by George A. Hay and Robert J. Reynolds; "Anticompetitive Mergers: Prevention and Cure," by William J. Kolasky, Jr., Philip A. Proger, and Roy T Englert, Jr.; "Industrial Markets: Another Look at the SIC Approach," by James W McKie; "Profitability and Market Share," by Morris A. Adelman and Bruce E. Stangle; "Non-Price Anticompetitive Behavior by Dominant Firms Toward the Producers of Complementary Products," by J. A. Ordover, A. O. Sykes, and R. D. Willig; "Market Conduct: When is it Anticompetitive?" by Robin C. Landis and Ronald S. Rolfe; "Can Exclusive Franchises Be Bad?" by F. M. Fisher; "Mixing Regulatory and Antitrust Policies in the Electric Power Industry: The Price Squeeze and Retail Market Competition," by Paul L. Joskow; "Preferences of Policy Makers for Alternative Allocations of the Broadcast Spectrum," by Forrest Nelson and Roger Noll; "The Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in Network Television: Regulatory Fantasy and Reality," by F. M. Fisher; and "Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: More on Departures of Price from Marginal Cost," by Almarin Phillips and Gary L. Roberts. Franklin M. Fisher is Professor of Economics at MIT. He is a coauthor with John McGowan and Joen Greenwood of Folded, Spindled, and Mutilated: Economic Analysis and U.S. v IBM, an MIT Press paperback.