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Communities of Competitors: Open Price Associations and the American State, 1911–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Extract

Recent comparative studies in Western industrialization have discovered a variety of economic “governance structures” between competitive markets and corporate hierarchies. Such “associative” forms of enterprise pose both a descriptive and an evaluative problem to students of capitalist development. Can business cooperate, or does a single competitor who hopes to do better by cheating undermine all associative agreements? Suppose cooperation is possible: can it be accomplished to improve products and production processes, rather than merely to redistribute wealth from consumers to business?

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Articles
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Copyright © Social Science History Association 1996 

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