| The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895-1904 Contributor(s): Lamoreaux, Naomi R. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521357659 ISBN-13: 9780521357654 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $28.49 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 1988 Annotation: Between 1895 and 1904 a great wave of mergers swept through the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy. More than 1,800 firms disappeared into horizontal combinations, at least a third of which controlled more than 70 percent of the markets in which they operated. In The Great Merger Movement in American Business, Naomi Lamoreaux explores the causes of the mergers, concluding that there was nothing natural or inevitable about turn-of-the-century combinations. With the aid of a formal model, Lamoureaux demonstrates that the merger wave was the product of a particular historical combination of circumstances: the development if capital-intensive production techniques; a spurt of rapid growth in a number of heavy industries in the late 1880s and early 1890s; and the panic and depression of 1883. Together, this sequence of events produced an episode of abnormally severe price competition that manufacturers finally turned to consolidation to alleviate. Despite her conclusion that the mergers were not inevitable, Lamoreaux does not accept the opposing view that they were necessarily a threat to competition. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - General - Business & Economics | Industries - General - Business & Economics | Economic History |
| Dewey: 338.8 |
| Physical Information: 0.54" H x 6.22" W x 8.96" (0.76 lbs) 224 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Between 1895 and 1904 a great wave of mergers swept through the manufacturing sector of the United States' economy. This book explores the causes of the mergers, arguing that there was nothing natural or inevitable about turn-of-the-century combinations. Despite this conclusion, the author does not accept the view that they were necessarily a threat to competition. She shows that most of these consolidations were less efficient that the new rivals that appeared almost immediately, and they quickly lost their positions of market dominance. More over, in most of those few cases where consolidations proved to be more efficient, the nation was better off for their formation. Some exceptions occurred, however, and in these instances anti-trust policy should have had a significant role to play. Unfortunately, the peculiar division of power and authority that characterizes the Federal system of government prevented an effective policy from emerging. Ironically, anti-trust policy proved much more effective against small firms in relatively competitive industries than large firms in oligopolistic ones. |
