Sunk Costs and Market Structure bridges the gap between the new generation of game theoretic models that has dominated the industrial organization literature over the past ten years and the traditional empirical agenda of the subject as embodied in the structure-conduct-performance paradigm developed by Joe S. Bain and his successors.
A Financial Times Book of the Year A ProMarket Book of the Year “Superbly argued and important...Donald Trump is in so many ways a product of the defective capitalism described in The Great Reversal. What the U.S. needs, instead, is another Teddy Roosevelt and his energetic trust-busting. Is that still imaginable? All believers in the virtues of competitive capitalism must hope so.” —Martin Wolf, Financial Times “In one industry after another...a few companies have grown so large that they have the power to keep prices high and wages low. It’s great for those corporations—and bad for almost everyone else.” —David Leonhardt, New York Times “Argues that the United States has much to gain by reforming how domestic markets work but also much to regain—a vitality that has been lost since the Reagan years...His analysis points to one way of making America great again: restoring our free-market competitiveness.” —Arthur Herman, Wall Street Journal Why are cell-phone plans so much more expensive in the United States than in Europe? It seems a simple question, but the search for an answer took one of the world’s leading economists on an unexpected journey through some of the most hotly debated issues in his field. He reached a surprising conclusion: American markets, once a model for the world, are giving up on healthy competition. In the age of Silicon Valley start-ups and millennial millionaires, he hardly expected this. But the data from his cutting-edge research proved undeniable. In this compelling tale of economic detective work, we follow Thomas Philippon as he works out the facts and consequences of industry concentration, shows how lobbying and campaign contributions have defanged antitrust regulators, and considers what all this means. Philippon argues that many key problems of the American economy are due not to the flaws of capitalism or globalization but to the concentration of corporate power. By lobbying against competition, the biggest firms drive profits higher while depressing wages and limiting opportunities for investment, innovation, and growth. For the sake of ordinary Americans, he concludes, government needs to get back to what it once did best: keeping the playing field level for competition. It’s time to make American markets great—and free—again.
A revised and updated textbook that integrates new approaches alongside a critical exposition of neoclassical theory. While the first edition presented the work of the Austrian School as the counter to the traditional (neoclassical) paradigm, the second edition widens the theoretical approaches considered to encompass all the major variants of what is becoming known as the new institutional economics, with, in particular, more attention being given to transaction cost economics. Paper edition (unseen), $15. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Standard economic models assume that many small investors own firms. This is so in most large U.S. firms, but wealthy individuals or families generally hold controlling blocks in smaller U.S. firms and in all firms in most other countries. Given this, the lack of theoretical and empirical work on tightly held firms is surprising. What corporate governance problems arise in tightly held firms? How do these differ from corporate governance problems in widely held firms? How do control blocks arise and how are they maintained? How does concentrated ownership affect economic growth? How should we regulate tightly held firms? Drawing together leading scholars from law, economics, and finance, this volume examines the economic and legal issues of concentrated ownership and their impact on a shifting global economy.
The book begins by reviewing the connection between firm size, innovation and market structure from a theoretical and an empirical point of view, with emphasis on the 'complexity' that defines this relationship. It then goes on to build an evolutionary model which explores different Schumpeterian propositions regarding the positive and negative feedback between firm size and innovation as well as the role of idiosyncratic random events on industry market structure. The concluding chapter uses 100 years in the history of the US automobile industry to explore the relationship between market share instability and stock price volatility and the degree to which this relationship is connected to industry specific factors. This innovative new book will prove invaluable to researchers, lecturers and scholars of industrial organisation, technology and market structure.
This book provides empirical insights into the relationship between capital and equity-ownership structure of Indian manufacturing companies and their financial performance. It discusses and analyses the basic theories and concepts associated with capital structure, debt financing, levered and unlevered firms, the various forms of ownership, agency problem and its kind and the exploitation of minority owners by the large and largest owners. The study employs a set of the most reliable and suitable econometric estimation techniques to draw meaningful inferences on the Indian manufacturing sector. The novelty of this book lies in three particular aspects: the depth and dimension with which the topic is addressed; the robust empirical evidence that it has produced and the simple and intelligible approach with which it is authored. It communicates the crucial relevance of corporate capital structure and equity-ownership to the moderation of agency relationship and shaping the internal governance mechanism, which ultimately results in increased or decreased operational efficiency and financial performance. It will enable readers to understand whether an increased amount of debt capital would bring about positive results for firms or create an extra burden on the management of their finances, preventing them from taking productive investment decisions due to the threat of liquidation. The book will find an audience among advanced students, scholars and researchers who are interested in understanding the corporate finance practices and governance mechanism of Indian organizations.