Size of Markets, Scale of Firms, and the Character of Competition

Abstract

Economic theorists attempt to make the term ‘market’ one of precision, pertaining to a single commodity and to a community of buyers and sellers who are so intimately associated with one another that a single price emerges from their bargaining. Even small countries are large enough to contain, for most commodities, more than one market thus defined. Presumably we are not concerned here with the variety of market magnitudes to be found within a single country and the influence of this variety upon industrial organization. Our interest is in differences from country to country in the size of business enterprises and the vigour of competition. Accordingly, I shall discuss the effect upon these, not of the size of the market, but of the size of the national economy.