Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Relative Rigidity of Monopoly Pricing The relationship between industry structure and pricing is a major focus of Industrial Organization. One of the most striking facts to have emerged about this relationship is that monopolists tend to change their prices less frequently than tight oligopolies. Although the first evidence in this regard was presented by Stigler (1947) almost forty years ago, no theoretical explanations have been offered. The objective of this papergis to develop models capable of explaining these facts. Stigler's objective in comparing the relative rigidity of monopoly and dqoly prices was to test the kinked demand curve theory of Hall and Hitch (1939) and Sweezy Since the work of Gardiner Means (1935) seemed to show that concentrated industries exhibited greater price rigidity than their unconcentrated counterparts, the kinked demand curve was developed and embraced as providing a theoretical foundation for the rigidity of prices. It was widely regarded to be an implication of that theory that du0polists would not change their prices in response to small changes in their costs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.