Word: economists
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Still, Robert Bork, now a Yale law professor, contended that Kennedy-Metzenbaum is symptomatic of a new anti-bigness mentality in the highest reaches of Government. Though most conference participants felt that large companies compete as ferociously and fairly as small firms, they were told by Economist Walter Adams of Michigan State University that antitrust has political as well as economic elements. Said he: "The objective of antitrust is not to promote efficiency and consumer welfare. These are only ancillary benefits that are expected to flow from economic freedom. The primary purpose of antitrust is to perpetuate and preserve...
...other side, speakers argued that the Government's concern ought not to be bigness per se, but whether corporate giants are efficient and whether competition flourishes in their industries. U.C.L.A. Economist Harold Demsetz said that despite the rise of conglomerates, there has not been much change in market concentration in 70 years, "and those increases in concentration that have occurred have been associated with lower prices and increases in efficiency." Yale Economist Paul MacAvoy reported that his own research shows that conglomerate mergers do not produce more concentration in specific markets but do tend to produce gains in efficiency...
Disagreeing with Demsetz and MacAvoy, Economist Willard Mueller of the University of Wisconsin claimed that corporations have indeed increased their size and power because "the percentage of all U.S. manufacturing assets held by the nation's 200 largest industrial corporations has risen from about 48% in 1950 to over 60% today." In fact, big companies have not increased their shares of individual markets but, as conglomerates, have grown larger and larger in the economy as a whole. In the past two decades, multinational companies have also grown, and the growth of their overseas activities has helped to make...
...demands. An editorial in the Tokyo Shimbun, an influential daily, argues that "it has become a fixed pattern that as soon as Japan concedes one issue, the U.S. brings up a fresh one. We cannot tolerate the disgusting threat of retaliation every time a Congressman opens his mouth." Says Economist Kunihiro Takano: "What the Americans are really telling the Japanese is, 'Change your tastes, your attitude and your life-style so you can buy more American goods.' That borders on domestic interference...
Even Conservative apologists like Peregrine Worsthorne in the Daily Telegraph and the editors of the influential Economist have publicly cast doubt on whether British business will be adept enough in responding to the 'Spirit of Proposition 13" to produce the necessary growth on its own. There are fears of a repeat of 1971-72, when similar incentives from the Conservative government of Edward Heath merely produced property speculation, a record low in productive investment and an inflationary consumer boom. The Tories have claimed they will provide some of the money by allowing private investment in state-run industries--but this...