In a 1966 article in the <em>American Economic Review</em>, Harvey Leibenstein introduced the concept of "X-efficiency": the gap between ideal allocative efficiency and actually existing efficiency. Leibenstein insisted that absent strong competitive pressure, firms are unlikely to use their resources...

Where average fixed costs are large compared to marginal costs, competition will drive industry into bankruptcy. During the last century, the chaos that competition created within the railroad industry caused many prominent U.S. economists to reject the market in favor of trusts, cartels, and...

Joseph A. Schumpeter's celebrated theory of creative destruction was anticipated by David Wells's Recent Economic Changes (1989). In some respects, Wells's treatment is superior to that of Schumpeter. Unlike Schumpeter, who believed that monopolistic competition could maximize economic growth,...