From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Thu Jan 29 2004 - 10:04:47 EST
"What is a Barrier to Entry?" by R. Preston McAfee, Hugo M. Mialon, and Michael A. Williams discuss the history of this concept. Although Donald H. Wallace in the _Papers and Proceedings of the 48th Meeting of the AEA_ (March, 1936) suggested that "barriers to free entry ... needs thorough study", Joe S. Bain defined and explained this concept in _Barriers to New Competition_ (1956). McAfee, Mialon and Williams go on to list seven 'principal' definitions of barrier to entry. A review of these definitions is revealing to the extent that the authors demonstrate that this expression has been used variously by different authors. Some of these definitions are more closely linked to marginalist theory than others. This is consistent with the point I suggested in yesterday's post. (the paper is supposedly available in pdf format online, but I couldn't get content when II tried to open it. However, there is a back door way of accessing the paper: you can 'google' under the authors or title of the paper and click on 'cached') Other subjects linked to barriers to entry that do not have their origin in classical of Marxian theory include oligopolies, product differentiation, non-price competition, price leadership, etc. All of these topics, I believe, need to be integrated within a more developed Marxian theory of competition. Such a theory need not make any concessions to marginalism but rather recognizes and explains the evolution of capitalist competition since the time of Marx. In solidarity, Jerry
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