"Using data from before and after the 1956 Act, this book compares the two groups of industries to determine the effect of price competition on concentration, firm and plant numbers, profitability, advertising intensity, and innovation. The book avoids two problems common to empirical studies of competition: how to measure the intensity of competition and how to unravel the links between competition and other variables.

Because the change in the intensity of competition had an external cause, there is no need to measure the intensity of competition directly, and it is possible to identify one-way causal effects when estimating the impact of competition.".

"The book also examines issues such as which industries collusion is more likely to occur in: the effects of cartels and cartel laws on market structure and profitability: the links between competition, advertising, and innovation: and the constraints on the exercise of merger and antitrust policies."--BOOK JACKET.