 Price-Quality Competition in Oligopolistic InterdependenceRobert E. Kuenne Chapter 13 in The Economics of Imperfect Competition and Employment, 1989, pp 437-461 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract The nature of product differentiation in Joan Robinson’s Economics of Imperfect Competition remains unclear fifty-odd years after its publication. Her thinking was shaped by the cost disputes in the British literature of the 1920s that reacted to the recently formalized analysis of the firm in pure competition. Because, it was asserted, decreasing costs were experienced in industry more frequently than not, the limits to the size of the firm must be dictated by a declining demand curve, not rising marginal cost and horizontal demand functions. As Sraffa (1926) argued explicitly in the most influential article in the debate, the analysis of the firm’s decision-making must be reformulated in a universal theory of monopoly. Implicitly, the decreasing cost advocates urged that if the inspired fuzziness of Marshal-lian economics had to be formalized, the monopoly model, not that of pure competition, was the more relevant tool. Robinson’s debt to Sraffa is amply recorded in her book.1 Keywords: Marginal Cost; Demand Function; American Economic Review; Demand Curve; Marginal Profit (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-08630-6_13 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-08630-6_13 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan |
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