Book Review: Welfare Aspects of Industrial Markets

• Date: 01 September 1978
• Published date: 01 September 1978
• Author: Corwin D. Edwards
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7802300312
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

A. P. Jacquemin

and

H. W. de

Jong

(eds.), Welfare Aspects

of

Industrial Markets, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff (1977),

465 pp., 76.80 Dutch florins.

This volume, the outgrowth of two international confer-

ences in 1976, is a

group

product.

It

has two editors

and

18

essays by 24 authors.

Its

focus, nevertheless, is derived from

British

and

American influences. Though the two editors

are

Dutch

and

Belgian respectively, nine of the authors

are

from

the United Kingdom, seven from the United States,

and

the

remaining seven from

four

countries, Sweden, West Germany,

France, and Yugoslavia.

In

scope, the book breaks new ground.

It

not only dis-

cusses such traditional topics as market structure, competition

policy, concentration,

and

economies of scale,

but

also includes

essays on inflation

and

stagflation, such public policies as im-

port

quotas,

and

capital-market takeovers. Most of

its

esaays

emphasize neglected variables and thus

add

complications

to analyses. Some of them reject or substantially codify what

has been conventional in analysis

or

in conclusions about

policy. The focus of attention is the welfare implications of

the topics, both traditional

and

new.

As was to be expected in a book thus conceived, the volume

as a whole neither seeks

nor

achieves consecutive

and

coherent

analysis

nor

makes persuasive extensions of conventional

wisdom.

Its

merit

lies in its reformulations

and

extensions of

relevant variables, in consequent reformulations of old contro-

versies,

and

in suggestions about new controversies as to

which the rival views

are

well expressed

and

well defended.

As stimulus

and

challenge, much of the book

rates

high.

The essays divide roughly into five groups.

Part

one raises

problems about such fundamental questions as whether con-

cepts of industrial organization have given adequate attention

to degrees of

risk

in business decisions, meagerness of in-

formation available to those who decide,

and

the complex

interactions between hired managements

and

large owners.

Part

two concerns the impacts of inflation

and

stagflation upon

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