The present volume of essays on industrial organization, which are based on conferences held at Nijenrode and Brussels, differs considerably from its predecessor. Even more than in the first volume the essays demonstrate the broad scope of industrial organization analysis. Besides the traditional topics such as economies of scale, monopoly and competition policy, there are essays on methodology, on stagflation, and on the relationship between industrial struc ture and international trade and trade policies. The latter topics are of growing importance. The issue of restructuring industries and...

This book originated at a meeting of American and European specialists in in dustrial organization, at the Instituut voor Bedrijfskunde, Nijenrode (The Netherlands) in August, 1974. The conference endeavored to bring together re searchers in a field where, paradoxically, the underlying phenomena studied are increasingly coordinated and internationalized, yet the observers remain pre dominantly isolated. Only rarely do they resort to comparisons between coun tries, and still less frequently to an analysis from a transnational outlook. As the contributions to this collection demonstrate, it has...

1. Research subject and objectives This study focuses on an economic institution, the large industrial holding company, which continues to hold a prominent if not a strategic position in the resource allocation process in many industrialised market economies. Powerful multicompany combines like the famous Japanese zaibatsu and the less familiar but equally powerful European industrial groups rely on the institution of the holding company to tie their intermarket control network together. Two general questions arise from this situation: first, what factors account for the viability and growth...