Market Structure And Innovation

Technical advance requires resources and is motivated by the quest for profits; therefore, the rate and direction of advance is determined by the economic system. Recognition of this fact has focused attention on the performance of the market economy in the allocation of resources to technical advance, and the consequent body of research is surveyed and synthesised in this book. The theories of market structure and innovation proposed by Schumpeter, Galbraith, Arrow, Schmookler, Scherer, Mansfield, Phillips, Barzel, Kamien and Schwartz, Loury, Nelson and Winter, Grabowski, Dasgupta and Stiglitz, and others are presented in an integrated form. These theories deal with the nature of competition, the incentives to innovate and the pace of innovative activity under different market structures, and the existence of a market structure that yields the most rapid rate of innovation. In addition, the findings of seventy empirical studies dealing with various facets of the microeconomics of technical innovation are presented. The book is designed to be accessible to economists working in a variety of situations - in universities, business and government - and who are concerned with questions of technical innovation. It is also suitable for senior-level undergraduates and first year graduate students approaching the subject in a comprehensive way for the first time.

Specifically, three classes of institutional discontinuities are discussed: privatization processes, mergers and acquisitions and liberalization of the market. The authors aim to show that the effects of such institutional discontinuities may seriously affect, in the short term, the market value of the firm, and in the medium/long term, the performance of the national system of innovation as a whole.

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.

Innovation - in products and processes - is an increasingly significant source of competitive advantage for firms and nations. Analyzing extensive data on major innovations in the UK, this study examines the role of innovative activity in the structure of markets and the performance of firms.

A proposal for moving from price-centric to innovation-centric competition policy, reviewing theory and evidence on economic incentives for innovation. Competition policy and antitrust enforcement have traditionally focused on prices rather than innovation. Economic theory shows the ways that price competition benefits consumers, and courts, antitrust agencies, and economists have developed tools for the quantitative evaluation of price impacts. Antitrust law does not preclude interventions to encourage innovation, but over time the interpretation of the laws has raised obstacles to enforcement policies for innovation. In this book, economist Richard Gilbert proposes a shift from price-centric to innovation-centric competition policy. Antitrust enforcement should be concerned with protecting incentives for innovation and preserving opportunities for dynamic, rather than static, competition. In a high-technology economy, Gilbert argues, innovation matters. Gilbert considers both theory and available empirical evidence on the relationships among market structure, firm behavior, and the production of new products and services. He reviews the distinctive features of the high-tech economy and why current analytical tools used by antitrust enforcers aren't up to the task of assessing innovation concerns. He considers, from the perspective of innovation competition, Kenneth Arrow's “replacement effect” and the Schumpeterian theory of market power and appropriation; discusses the effect of mergers on innovation and future price competition; and reviews the empirical literature on competition, mergers, and innovation. He describes examples of merger enforcement by US and European antitrust agencies; examines cases brought against Microsoft and Google; and discusses the risks and benefits of interoperability standards. Finally, he offers recommendations for competition policy. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

This book provides a survey of the theory and of the empirical knowledge about the links between market structure and technological change.