Antitrust, the Market, and the State: The Contributions of Walter Adams.

• Author: Kamerschen, David R.

Walter Adams was professor of economics at Michigan State University from 1947 (doctorate, Yale University, 1947) to 1992, served as its president, and was awarded the rank of Distinguished University Professor. His is a celebrated academic career, filled with honorary degrees, prestigious government appointments, international teaching assignments, and presidencies of several economic organizations. What a delight to be asked to review this collection representing a tiny slice of the work of a truly gifted, creative, and dedicated teacher-scholar (and stylist, e.g., p. 128, "The virus of bureaucracy is equally deadly to public and private monopoly"). It is rare, indeed, to find one who is professionally competent, personally affable, and (as Cecil MacKey says in the "Preface"), "absolutely incorruptible." In the allotted space, I cannot do justice to Professor Adams' work. I will instead list briefly some areas where he was (and is) a pioneer and/or major promulgator.

The 16 chapters in this volume are under four rubrics: Fundamentals; Selected Industry Studies; Selected Policy Studies; and Public Philosophy. Even if one confines study of Adams' work to this slim book, one can discover areas where his ideas are durable. However, since a complete list of his 12 books and approximately 140 articles and pamphlets from 1948 to 1991 is provided, the reader should read more of his accessible, fun, lively, erudite, fast-paced, frank, revealing, and tough work.

While F. M. Scherer's "Introduction" mentions a few of these, some of Professor Adams' major contributions include his:

(1) pre-public choice school concern that private interests dominate the public ones--that is, the rational, self-interest, and concupiscent (a favorite word of his) calculus that motivates human action in private markets applies to decisionmaking in the public sector;

(2) contention that justifications of large firm size on grounds of superior efficiency, innovation, marketing, etc., while possible are generally unlikely and at any rate unvalidated, especially in the automobile, petroleum, national defense, and steel industries;

(3) concern that government protection of domestic industry has been vastly overdone as competitive markets should follow meritocracy;

(4) belief that competition would work quite well in some, but not all, traditionally regulated industries such as trucking, which he called for deregulating at least as early as 1958 for not possessing subadditive...