The Theory Of Competitive Price

The sixteen essays in this collection are organized around five themes. The first group is concerned with the pricing implications of recent developments in the theory of the firm. The subject of the second group is wage-price guidelines, in theory and practice. The third set deals with pricing in regulated industries, with special attention to marginal cost pricing. Marketing models and empirical studies of pricing behavior are considered in the fourth set of essays. And the final group, closely related to this, deals with the rationality properties of business pricing decisions and the implications of pricing practices for antitrust enforcement. If a common view on pricing emerges from these provocative and timely papers; it is that an eclectic approach to pricing theories, policies, and practices appears at this stage to be appropriate, since neither neoclassical theory nor recent amendments, extensions, or alternatives to it appear individually rich enough to embrace the full range of variety that pricing behavior affords.

Concerned primarily with oligopoly, this work includes a general study of pricing in three different markets--perfect competition, perfect monopoly, and imperfect competition. The solutions of these markets offered by Cournot, Smithies, Chamberlin, Stackelberg, Fellner, and Robinson are presented mathematically, followed by the author's own version of the theory of rational pricing in oligopoly. Previous authors have not allowed for all the variables arising from profit and price situations in the market. Here, more realistic assumptions and more complex analyses indicate that sellers in oligopoly situations do not always need to arrange specific agreements--hence, that "administered" pricing does not inevitably occur when the market is dominated by a few producers.

Israel Kirzner's outstanding book on price theory is back in print. It is been very difficult to obtain it for decades, even though it is surely the best textbook on Austrian price theory ever written. The prose is crystal clear and the organization exceptional. He takes the reader through the foundations of individual action, exchange, utility, demand and supply, production, and the market process itself. Had it been in print, it would have schooled generations in Austrian price theory, and it is surely useful in the classroom today, or for general reading. Not a collection of essays, it is an integrated presentation from top to bottom, written early in Kirzner's post-doctoral career.