Book Reviews

• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7401900308
• Date: 01 September 1974
• Author: Alfred S. Eichner
• Published date: 01 September 1974
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

Peter

Asch, Economic

Theory

and the

Antitrust

Dilemma,

New York:

John

Wiley (1970), x +414 pp.,

$11.!l5.

Peter

Asch's book can be read

at

either of two levels. On

one plane

it

represents a well written, balanced survey of the

field of industrial organization. Thongh not as encyclopedic

as Scherer's recent Industrial Market

Structure

and Eco-

nomic Performance,

it

nonetheless manages to tonch on most

of the same salient theoretical and legal points during the

course of

its

400 pages and, because of this relative brevity,

may even seem to be the better choice to some as a textbook.

It

also covers the

current

state of

antitrust

law more ade-

quately-indeed

more adequately than any other book I know

of since the appearance of Dewey's M onop.oly in Economics

and Law. The only objection which anyone is likely to have

to the book in these terms is

that

it gives short

shrift

to the

policy questions

that

do not bear directly on antitrust. Only

the unregulated sectors of the economy, it should be noted,

are

dealt with.

Organizationally, Asch's book is divided into three

parts.

The first section reviews the existing body of microeconomic

theory as a normative base for

antitrust

policy. Here students

will be exposed to all they need to know about the theoretical

workings of competition, monopoly and monopolistic competi-

tion-if

not all they need to know about oligopoly. Aseh pre-

sents in an admirably brief, lucid and sophisticated fashion

not only what is generally covered in intermediate price

theory courses but also, going beyond that, the seminal con-

tributions of Simon, Baumol, Schumpeter and

John

M. Clark

to the theory of the firm. The section, however, breaks no new

ground, Asch being content merely to present what would pass

as the accepted wisdom of economics about pricing.

The second section takes up the problem of using empir-

ical evidence to close the gap which Asch sees between the

simplified world which theory is able to describe and the more

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