This text illustrates a broad range of American market structures through a series of case studies of specific industries. New industry cases covered in this edition include cigarettes, health care, telecommunications and commercial banking.

Americans continually cross paths with major industries that comprise the U.S. economy. These industries face and raise challenging issues that in turn generate important economic questions: How are individual industries organized and structured? What share of their market do they represent? What are the major public policy issues they affect? What are the economic consequences of addressing them? A single text examining every industry would provide a disjointed, haphazard analysis. The case-study approach taken in The Structure of American Industry avoids such shortcomings. The expert author of each case studyfourteen in allpresents a comprehensive and coherent analysis of a specific industry. The holistic, in-depth treatment sparks lively interest, does not succumb to theoretical abstractions, and offers practical answers to economic questions.

The major American industries—agriculture, petroleum, electricity, banking, telecommunications, movies, college sports, airlines, health care, and the beer, cigarette, and automotive industries—intersect our lives every day. Studying these industries raises a number of economic questions: How are the individual industries organized and structured? What is their history? What are the dominant organizations in each field, and what share of their market do they represent? What is the nature of competition in these fields, and how effectively does it govern economic decision making? The nature of these industries also raises a host of public policy challenges: What significant policy issues do they pose, what options are available for addressing them, and what role can and should the government play? Unlike other books that offer economic treatments focused on theoretical expositions and analyses, the thirteenth edition addresses all these questions in a manner that treats each industry in a comprehensive, holistic way. Brock’s approach focuses on everyday experience, enhancing readers’ understanding through examples that emphasize incident and detail. Each chapter, written by an expert in the field, has been updated or rewritten for this edition. A new chapter on the movie industry has been added as well. This outstanding overview of American industry offers the reader a live laboratory of clinical examination and comparative analysis.

Key features include: NEW -- Four new industries are now represented, including health care, cigarettes, telecommunications, and commercial banking. Al of the case studies carried over from the previous edition have been significantly revised and updated. NEW -- The industry studies on computers and college sports have been completely rewritten for this edition. Each industry is framed within the structure-conduce-performance approach to industrial organization. The uniqueness of each industry and important international issues are examined throughout the text. Industries included in this edition are agriculture, petroleum, automobiles, beer, computers, college sports, airlines, motion picture entertainment, cigarettes, health care, telecommunications, and commercial banking.

This book shows how the seventy largest corporations in America have dealt with a single economic problem: the effective administration of an expanding business. The author summarizes the history of the expansion of the nation's largest industries during the past hundred years and then examines in depth the modern decentralized corporate structure as it was developed independently by four companies—du Pont, General Motors, Standard Oil (New Jersey), and Sears, Roebuck. This 1990 reprint includes a new introduction by the author.

The Organization of Industry collects essays written over two decades—pieces prepared especially for this volume, previously unpublished material, and reprinted articles drawn from numerous sources, many which include additional commentary by the author. The essays are unified by George J. Stigler's careful analysis and by his clear and witty style. In part one, Stigler examines the nature of competition and monopoly. In part two he discusses the forces that determine the size structure of industry, including barriers to entry, economics of scale, and mergers. Part three contains articles on a wide range of topics, such as profitability, delivered price systems, block booking, the economics of information, and the kinky oligopoly demand curve and rigid price. Part four offers a discussion of antitrust policy and includes Stigler's recommendations for future policy as well as an examination of the effects of past policies. "Stigler's writings might well be subtitled 'The Joys of Doing Economics.' He, more than any other contemporary American economist, dispels the gloom surrounding economic theory. It is impossible to confront the subject treated with such humor and verve and come away still believing that economics is the dismal science."—Shirley B. Johnson, American Scholar