Monopolistic Competition in the Industrial Era

Angus Chu and Pietro F. Peretto

Chapter 8 in Human Origins and Evolution in a Malthusian Economy, 2025, pp 83-92 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: In the previous chapter, we considered an industrial production function without specifying a market economy. This chapter presents a microeconomic foundation of the previous industrial production function, in which the fixed cost δ is now interpreted as a fixed operation cost incurred by firms with monopolistic power over their products. As North and Thomas (1973, p. 156) write, “England […] by 1700 […] had developed an efficient set of property rights embedded in the common law [and…] begun to protect private property in knowledge with its patent law. The stage was now set for the industrial revolution.” Specifically, one can think of the industrial production function in (7.5) as a reduced-form representation of a market structure of monopolistic competition. In this extended Malthusian growth model with a market structure of monopolistic competition, the transition from agricultural production to industrial production can become gradual, and this gradual industrial transition is more consistent with the Industrial Revolution…

Keywords: Human Origins; Human Evolution; Malthusian Growth Theory; Natural Selection; Human Brain Size Evolution; Prehistoric Human Migration; Migration Out of Africa; Extinction of Archaic Humans; Neolithic Revolution; Political Fragmentation and Unification; Industrial Revolution; Technological Progress; Innovation; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 J11 N10 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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