Competition and Entrepreneurship

Written the year of Mises's death, this is the book that brought new prominence to the Austrian theory of the entrepreneur. Kirzner views him as the discoverer of opportunities in the competitive process, and contrasts this view with the general equilibrium view-which defines away the entrepreneur-and the Schumpeterian view that discovery is always disequilibrating. For its lucidity and focus, this remains an Austrian classic.

The contents of this seminal work include:

• Preface

• 1. Market Process versus Market Equilibrium
  • The Market System and the Theory of the Market
  • The Task of Price Theory: Two Views
  • Competition and Entrepreneurship
  • The Market Process
  • Competition in the Market Process
  • Entrepreneurship in the Market Process
  • The Producer and the Market Process
  • Monopoly and the Market Process
  • The Entrepreneur as Monopolist
  • The Producer and His Choice of Product
  • Equilibrium Economics, Entrpreneurship, and Competition

• 2. The Entrepreneur
  • The Nature of Entrepreneurship
  • Decision-making and Economizing
  • The Entrepreneur in the Market
  • The Producer as Entrepreneur
  • Entrepreneurial Profits
  • Entrepreneurship, Ownership, and the Firm
  • Ownership, Entrepreneurship, and the Corporate Firm
  • A Hypothetical Example
  • The Corporate Firm Once Again
  • Entrepreneurship and Knowledge
  • Entrepreneurship and the Equilibrating Process
  • Entrepreneurship in the Literature
  • Misesian Entrepreneurship

• 3. Competition and Monopoly
  • Competition: A Situation or a Process?
  • Entrepreneurship and Competition
  • The Meaning of Monopoly
  • The Two Notions of Monopoly Compared
  • The Theory of Monopolistic Competition
  • Some Remarks on the Notion of the Industry
  • Schumpeter, Creative Destruction, and the Competitive Process
  • Entrepreneurship as a Route to a Monopoly Position

• 4. Selling Costs, Quality, and Competition
  • On the Product as an Economic Variable
  • Production Costs and Selling Costs
  • Selling Costs, Consumer Knowledge, and Entrepreneurial Alertness
  • Advertising, Consumer Knowledge, and the Economics of Information
  • Advertising, Information, and Persuasion
  • Advertising, Selling Effort, and Competition
  • Waste, Consumer Sovereignty, and Advertising
  • Buying Effort, Factor Quality, and Entrepreneurial Symmetry

• 5. The Long Run and the Short
  • The Long and the Short Run in the Literature
  • On Sunk Costs and the Short Run
  • Costs, Profits, and Decisions
  • Entrepreneurial Decisions, the Long Run and the Short
  • Some Additional Cases
  • Further Observations on Long-run Competition and Short-run Monopoly

• 6. Competition, Welfare, and Coordination
  • The Fundamental Flaw in Welfare Economics
  • Knowledge, Coordination, and Entrepreneurship
  • The Coordinating Process
  • The Role of Profits
  • Resource Misallocation, Transaction Costs, and Entrepreneurship
  • Nirvana, Transaction Costs, and Coordination
  • The "Wastes" of Competition
  • Long-run and Short-run Evaluations

ISBN 0-226-43776-0 243 pp. (pb)