The classical notion of competition revisited

Neri Salvadori and Rodolfo Signorino

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We compare and analyse two different conceptions of market competition: the walrasian notion of perfect competition and the Classical notion of free competition: while the former may be described as an equilibrium state in which atomistic agents treat prices parametrically, the latter is a situation in which agents, endowed by market power, fix prices strategically. We show that price undercutting or outbidding are the typical phenomena that, for the Classical authors, may be observed in a market characterized by free competition. We investigate some problematic aspects of the neoclassical notion of perfect competition and we reconstruct the Classical theory of free competition, as developed, in particular, by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, in the light of the modern notion of mixed strategies equilibria.

Keywords: Classical Economics; Competition; Adam Smith; Karl Marx; mixed strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B12 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-05-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22499/1/MPRA_paper_22499.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Classical Notion of Competition Revisited (2013)
Working Paper: The classical notion of competition revisited (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:22499

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter (winter@lmu.de).