Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T11:57:13.440Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - How Does the Competitive Process Work?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2022

Peter E. Earl
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Get access

Summary

This chapter brings together ideas from earlier chapters on decision-making and integrates them with perspectives from evolutionary economics to analyze the process of structural change. It begins with a neo-Marshallian view of the competitive process and price setting in a mature industry, which is then extended to consider how selection processes work when an industry is disrupted by customers switching to different products or the uptake of innovative production systems. This leads to a view of industries as being akin to sporting leagues in which the winners can increasingly dominate unless new entrants or less-successful firms can fight back despite smaller profits by rewriting the rules of the game. The uptake of new concepts is analyzed via Dopfer et al.’s “micro–meso–macro framework,” in which a “meso” is a generic concept that firms apply in different “micro” ways, often triggering much wider “macro” changes (e.g., impacts of smartphone apps) but where adoption can be delayed by deal-breaker issues with initial versions and other sources of resistance to change. Finally, the chapter examines how shifting corporate politics shapes how bold firms are in making innovations and how the changing distribution of knowledge in an industry affects the division of labor between firms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Principles of Behavioral Economics
Bringing Together Old, New and Evolutionary Approaches
, pp. 339 - 387
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×