Overview

Market Evolution: Competition and Cooperation is a selection of papers presented at the recent meeting of the European Association of Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE). The volume brings together twenty high-quality papers reflecting frontier research in modern industrial organization. The contributions cover a broad spectrum of increasing theoretical, empirical and policy issues, including analyses of the nature of the firm, product differentiation, research and development, strategic alliances, information sharing in the banking sector, exchange rate pass-through in international competition, labor unionization and product rivalry, buyer-supplier bargaining, multimarket competition and related entry, entry and exit processes, multinational enterprises in the Third World, European integration and the restructuring of Eastern Europe. From a theoretical perspective, many chapters apply game theory to the analysis of firm behaviors and market competition. Moreover, a large number of the studies contain a significant empirical part, mainly by employing econometric techniques, to test the hypotheses derived from modern industrial organization theories. Data from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the European Union are presented and analyzed.