IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11645.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Barriers To Entry

Author

Listed:
  • Dennis W. Carlton

Abstract

This paper analyzes the concept of barriers to entry. It explains that the concept is a static one and explores the inadequacy of the concept in a world with sunk costs, adjustment costs and uncertainty. The static concept addresses the question of whether profits are excessive. The more interesting and relevant question is how fast entry or exit will erode profits or losses and how do the bounds that entry and exit place on price vary with uncertainty and sunk cost. Intuition based on the static concept of barrier to entry can be misleading in many industries.

Suggested Citation

  • Dennis W. Carlton, 2005. "Barriers To Entry," NBER Working Papers 11645, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11645
    Note: IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11645.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weitzman, Martin L, 1983. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 486-487, June.
    2. Baumol, William J, 1982. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, March.
    3. Pindyck, Robert S., 2005. "Sunk Costs and Real Options in Antitrust," Working papers 18233, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    4. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    5. Timothy Dunne & Mark J. Roberts & Larry Samuelson, 1988. "Patterns of Firm Entry and Exit in U.S. Manufacturing Industries," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(4), pages 495-515, Winter.
    6. repec:reg:rpubli:237 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Rchard Schmalensee, 2004. "Sunk Costs and Antitrust Barriers to Entry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 471-475, May.
    8. Ariel Pakes & Michael Ostrovsky & Steven Berry, 2007. "Simple estimators for the parameters of discrete dynamic games (with entry/exit examples)," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 373-399, June.
    9. Bresnahan, Timothy F & Reiss, Peter C, 1991. "Entry and Competition in Concentrated Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 977-1009, October.
    10. Preston R. Fee & Hugo M. Mialon & Michael A. Williams, 2004. "What Is a Barrier to Entry?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 461-465, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richard Harris & Qian Cher Li, 2007. "Learning-by-Exporting? Firm-Level Evidence for UK Manufacturing and Services Sectors," Working Papers 2007_22, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    2. Olender-Skorek, Magdalena, 2012. "To Regulate Or Not to Regulate? – Economic Approach to Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU)," MPRA Paper 48548, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Senyuta, Olena & Žigić, Krešimir, 2016. "Managing spillovers: An endogenous sunk cost approach," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 45-64.
    4. Yevgeniya Shevtsova, 2012. "International Trade and Productivity: Does Destination Matter?," Discussion Papers 12/18, Department of Economics, University of York.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pindyck, Robert S., 2005. "Sunk Costs and Real Options in Antitrust," Working papers 18233, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    2. Federico Ciliberto & Jonathan W. Williams, 2010. "Limited Access to Airport Facilities and Market Power in the Airline Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(3), pages 467-495.
    3. Xiao, Mo & Orazem, Peter F., 2011. "Does the fourth entrant make any difference?: Entry and competition in the early U.S. broadband market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 547-561, September.
    4. Liu, An-Hsiang & Siebert, Ralph B., 2022. "The competitive effects of declining entry costs over time: Evidence from the static random access memory market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Rchard Schmalensee, 2004. "Sunk Costs and Antitrust Barriers to Entry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 471-475, May.
    6. Golombek, Rolf & Raknerud, Arvid, 2018. "Exit dynamics of start-up firms: Structural estimation using indirect inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 205(1), pages 204-225.
    7. Ernst R. Berndt & Rena M. Conti & Stephen J. Murphy, 2017. "The Landscape of US Generic Prescription Drug Markets, 2004-2016," NBER Working Papers 23640, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Olender-Skorek, Magdalena, 2012. "To Regulate Or Not to Regulate? – Economic Approach to Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU)," MPRA Paper 48548, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Allan Collard-Wexler, 2006. "Plant Turnover and Demand Fluctuations in the Ready-Mix Concrete Industry," Working Papers 06-08, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    10. Timothy Dunne & Shawn D. Klimek & Mark J. Roberts & Daniel Yi Xu, 2009. "The Dynamics of Market Structure and Market Size in Two Health Service Industries," NBER Chapters, in: Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data, pages 303-327, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Robert S. Pindyck, 2009. "Sunk Costs and Risk-Based Barriers to Entry," NBER Working Papers 14755, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Connolly Michelle & Prieger James E., 2013. "A Basic Analysis of Entry and Exit in the US Broadband Market, 2005–2008," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(3), pages 229-270, September.
    13. Jaap H. Abbring & Jeffrey R. Campbell, 2006. "Oligopoly dynamics with barriers to entry," Working Paper Series WP-06-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    14. Cheung, Cherry & Coucke, Kristien & Neicu, Daniel, 2011. "A Decision Tree as a Quick Scan for Effective Market Functioning," Working Papers 2011/06, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    15. Arora, Ashish & Fosfuri, Andrea, 1999. "Exploring the internalization rationale for international investment: wholly owned subsidiary versus technology licensing in the worldwide chemical industry," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB 6430, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    16. Paul Ellickson & Sanjog Misra, 2012. "Enriching interactions: Incorporating outcome data into static discrete games," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-26, March.
    17. Dasgupta Utteeyo, 2011. "Are Entry Threats Always Credible?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-41, December.
    18. Mitsukuni Nishida, 2015. "Estimating a Model of Strategic Network Choice: The Convenience-Store Industry in Okinawa," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(1), pages 20-38, January.
    19. Martin Gaechter & Peter Schwazer & Engelbert Theurl, 2013. "Entry into the Physicians’ Market: Empirical Evidence from the Outpatient Sector in Austria," DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, European Association Comenius - EACO, issue 4, pages 245-260, December.
    20. Koen de Backer, 2002. "Does foreign direct investment crowd out domestic entrepreneurship?," Economics Working Papers 618, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11645. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.