Early Neoclassical views on Monopoly: the Cournotian heritage
| Autor | Andrés Álvarez |
| Cargo | Profesor Asociado , Escuela de Economía Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Grupo de investigación en pensamiento y teoría económica GIPTE |
| Páginas | 100-120 |
100
Andrés Álvarez
Resumen
A pesar de la influencia teórica indiscutible de Cournot sobre la teoría
contemporánea, su legado en relación con las políticas económicas y en
particular con la regulación de los monopolios es mucho menor. Este trabajo
explora las formas diversas que tiene el análisis de las estructuras monopólicas
de mercado propuesto por Cournot, partiendo de su modelo teórico hasta su
análisis más normativo y empírico. Utilizando textos poco conocidos del autor
se pone en evidencia la versatilidad de sus ideas y la riqueza de su legado
analítico. A partir de estos elementos se intenta reconstruir la influencia que
sus ideas tuvieron sobre tres de los principales autores de finales del siglo XIX:
Walras, Edgeworth y Marshall. Se muestra que existe una representación
teórica que constituye la referencia indiscutible sobre los monopolios pero que
se enriquece en los análisis normativos y resulta en propuestas de regulación
y de política económica diversas que cada uno de estos autores desarrolla y
se apropia de manera diferente.
Palabras clave: Cournot, Walras, Edgeworth, Marshall, Monopolio,
Organización Industrial
Abstract
In spite of Cournot’s unquestionable influence on contemporary theory,
his legacy regarding economic policy and, especially, the regulation of
monopolies is mostly unknown. In this paper I explore the several forms
of Cournot’s analysis of monopolistic market structures, starting with his
theoretical model up to his normative and empirical examination. With the
help of little known texts of the author I aim at showing the versatility of his
ideas and the richness of his analytical legacy. Against this setup I retrace
his influence over three of the most important economists of the end of the
XIXth century: Walras, Edgeworth and Marshall. I show that there exists a
theoretical representation that constitutes the indisputable reference regarding
monopolies that is enriched with normative analyses and leads each one of
them to their own specific proposals in regulation and economic policy.
Keywords: Cournot, Walras, Edgeworth, Marshall, Monopoly, Industrial
Organization
Clasificación JEL:
101
Early Neoclassical views on Monopoly:
the Cournotian heritage
Andrés Álvarez*
Fecha de recepción: agosto 15 de 2009 - Fecha de aceptación: enero 29 de 2010.
* Profesor Asociado , Escuela de Economía Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Grupo de
investigación en pensamiento y teoría económica GIPTE. Contact: caalvarezga@unal.edu.co.
The author thanks the participants on the 13th Annual Meeting of the European Society for the
History of Economic Thought and in particular Manuela Mosca for her very accurate and helpful
comments on a previous version of this paper. This version has benefited a lot from comments of
participants at the first Jornadas Colombianas de Historia del Pensamiento organized in Medellín
by the EAFIT and the University of Antioquia, November 2009. In particular: remarks, criticisms
and encouragements received from Francesco Bogliacino were very useful to improve this paper.
All errors, confusions and other problems remain my sole responsibility.
1. Introduction
This paper analyses how Cournot’s views on Monopoly have influenced
the early neoclassical authors. It is argued that there are two different
points of view derived from the cournotian evaluation of the consequence
of Monopoly. The first one is a purely theoretical construction that has
been adopted by modern economic theory. Even if it is a theoretical one
it has normative consequence. From this point of view, Cournot and his
heirs have derived normative elements justifying a negative appreciation
on Monopoly. The second is a more pragmatic point of view. Whereas the
former is purely theoretical the latter is derived from multiple examples and
it cannot be based on the same theoretical framework as the well known
theory of monopoly prices. From this pragmatic point of view, Cournot
constructs a more positive appreciation on the existence of monopolies.
These two different appraisals on imperfect markets have influenced
in different ways the works of the authors of the Marginal Revolution.
Following this distinction we study the different points of view of Walras,
Edgeworth and Marshall on Monopoly. We show that even if Walras’s
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