Industrial organization has changed a great deal in the past two
decades. Most importantly, it has evolved from a niche area in
economics to a discipline that is studied not only by most economists but
also by students and scholars in areas like finance, marketing and
strategy. The evolution of the status of IO was not properly
accompanied by the supply of new IO texts. This text attempts to
fill the perceived gap: here, then, is a text that will appeal to a wide
audience of readers, including not only economics students but also
students from other areas who are interested in economics as part of
their education. Accordingly, the main features of the book are the
following:
First, the book is an introduction. This is naturally
reflected by its length, between one third and one half of most other
texts. However, brevity is achieved not so much through
superficiality in the treatment of each issue, but rather through greater
selectivity in the list of topics addressed.
Second, the book is issue-driven rather than
methodology-driven or literature-driven. Although the
text makes extensive use of models (because they are very useful ways of
understanding reality), new models are only introduced when this is
justified in terms of the marginal benefit in understanding some issue.