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Joseph Schumpeter on Competition

By  |  October 30, 2008

Thomas McCraw, Nov 01, 2008

During the 1980s, there began a spirited revival of interest in the writings of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), spurred by renewed attention to his seminal works on entrepreneurship and innovation. The movement gathered so much strength that citations to Schumpeter by scholars and journalists began to exceed those to Keynes, a phenomenon that would have seemed unthinkable only a few years earlier. In 2000, Business Week ran a two-page spread titled America´s Hottest Economist Died 50 Years Ago. The following documents illustrate the relevance of Schumpeter´s thought to competition policy. Part I is an introduction to Schumpeter´s ideas; Part II a series of excerpts from his book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy; Part III a 1951 critique of his stance toward antitrust by the economist Edward S. Mason; and Part IV an evaluation of the current use of Schumpeter´s theories in discussions of competition policy.

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