Market Failures and Public Policy

Industrial organization studies the exercise and control of market power. To this purpose, it builds models that capture the essence of the situation. The predictions of the model can then be tested econometrically and possibly in the lab or the field. In the end, the reasonableness of, and robustness to modeling assumptions and the quality of empirical fit determine how confident economists are in making recommendations to public decision-makers for intervention, and to companies for the design of their business model. Industrial organization has a long tradition: first theoretical, with the work of French “engineer-economists” Antoine Augustin Cournot (1838) and Jules Dupuit (1844); then policy-oriented with the enactment of the Sherman Act (1890) and subsequent legislation; then descriptive with the studies of the Harvard school (“Structure-Conduct-Performance”) comforting and refining the antitrust drive; and finally skeptical with the Chicago school. The Chicago school correctly pointed out the lack of underlying theoretical doctrine and went on to cast doubt on the whole edifice. It however did not develop an alternative antitrust doctrine, perhaps because