Joe Staten Bain (4 July 1912,

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canadi ...

– 7 September 1991,

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and ...

) was an American economist associated with the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. Bain was designated a Distinguished Fellow by the

American Economic Association The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members. History and Constitution The AEA was est ...

in 1982. An accompanying statement referred to him as "the undisputed father of modern

Industrial Organization In economics, industrial organization is a field that builds on the theory of the firm by examining the structure of (and, therefore, the boundaries between) firms and markets. Industrial organization adds real-world complications to the pe ...

Economics."William G. Shepherd. "Bain, Joe Staten (1912–1991)," ''

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'' (2018), 3rd ed., is a twenty-volume reference work on economics published by Palgrave Macmillan. It contains around 3,000 entries, including many classic essays from the original Inglis Palgrave Dictio ...

'', 2nd Edition.
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Background and career

Bain received an

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

from UCLA in 1935. He studied at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...

, where he has also an instructor in Economics from 1936 to 1939. There he received an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. ...

in 1939 and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in 1940,Frederick E. Balderston and George F. Break
Joe S. Bain Jr., Economics: Berkeley

California Digital Library The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management a ...

under the direction of

Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian-born political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of German-Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Ha ...

, Edward Chamberlin and Edward Mason. The title of his dissertation was "The Value, Depreciation and Replacement of Durable Capital Goods". Bain was appointed Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley in 1939 and served there until his retirement in 1975. He also served in 1960 as director of studies at the California Water Industry.

Contributions

Bain was a prolific author, at both the theoretical and applied level. Major works included ''The Economics of the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry'' (1944-1947) described as "a landmark in the application and empirical testing of the hypotheses of

microeconomic theory Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics foc ...

."• 1983. "Joe S. Bain: Distinguished Fellow 1982," ''American Economic Review'', 73(3) unnumbered front pages.br/>• Frederick E. Balderston and George F. Break
Joe S. Bain Jr., Economics: Berkeley - California Digital Library.
/ref> His work in the 1950s culminated in ''Barriers to New Competition'' (1956),Joe S. Bain, 1956. ''Barriers to New Competition: Their Character and Consequences in Manufacturing'', Harvard University Press. Review extract

and ''Industrial Organization: A

Treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions." Trea ...

'' (1959).Joe S. Bain, 1959, 2nd ed., 1968. ''Industrial Organization: A Treatise'', John Wiley. Bain developed the

paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. Etymology ''Paradigm'' comes ...

of structure, conduct, and performance as related to the industry, as distinct from individual firms or industries.Leonard W. Weiss, 1979. "The Structure-Conduct-Performance Paradigm and Antitrust," ''

University of Pennsylvania Law Review The ''University of Pennsylvania Law Review'' is a law review published by an organization of second and third year J.D. students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It is the oldest law journal in the United States, having been publishe ...

'',127(4) p
1104
It postulated and tested

barriers to entry In theories of competition in economics, a barrier to entry, or an economic barrier to entry, is a fixed cost that must be incurred by a new entrant, regardless of production or sales activities, into a market that incumbents do not have or hav ...

as a determinant of industry performance.

Market concentration In economics, market concentration is a function of the number of firms and their respective shares of the total production (alternatively, total capacity or total reserves) in a market. In any industry, a handful of firms that hold a signifi ...

was analyzed in relation to

market power In economics, market power refers to the ability of a firm to influence the price at which it sells a product or service by manipulating either the supply or demand of the product or service to increase economic profit. In other words, market pow ...

and rate of profit.

Selected works

* 1941. "The Profit Rate as a Measure of Monopoly Power," ''

Quarterly Journal of Economics ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press for the Harvard University Department of Economics. Its current editors-in-chief are Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan ...

'', 55(2), pp
271
293. * "Market Classifications in Modern Price Theory," ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', 56(4), pp
560
574. * 1944–1947. "The Economics of the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry" (3 vols.). * 1948. ''Pricing, Distribution and Employment: Economics of an Enterprise System'', Holt. * 1948. "Price and Production Policies," in Howard Ellis, ed., ''A Survey of Contemporary Economics'', Blakiston, pp. 129–173. * 1950 "A Note on Pricing in Monopoly and Oligopoly," ''

American Economic Review The ''American Economic Review'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Economic Association. First published in 1911, it is considered one of the most prestigious and highly distinguished journals in the field of eco ...

'', 40(2), pp
35
47. * 1951. "Relation of Profit Rate to Industry Concentration: American Manufacturing, 1936-1940," ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', 65(3), pp
293
324. * 1952. "Price Theory". * 1954a. "Economies of Scale, Concentration and the Condition of Entry in Twenty Manufacturing Industries," ''American Economic Review'', 44(1), pp
15
39. * 1954b. "Conditions of Entry and the Emergence of Monopoly," in ''Monopoly and Competition and Their Regulation'', Edward H. Chamberlin, ed., Macmillan, pp. 215–41. * 1966a. "Chamberlin's Impact on Microeconomic Theory," in ''Monopolistic Competition Theory'', Robert Kuenne, ed. * 1966b. ''International Differences in Industrial Structure: Eight Nations in the 1950s'', Yale University Press, 1966
Abstract.
* 1966. ''Northern California's Water Industry'', with Richard E. Caves and Julius Margolis, Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future. * 1970. ''Essays on Economic Development'', Institute of Business and Economic Research, University of California. * 1972. ''Essays on Price Theory and Industrial Organization'', Littre, Brown. * 1973. ''Environmental Decay: Economic Causes and Remedies'', Little, Brown. * 1986. "Structure Versus Conduct as Indicators of Market Performance: The Chicago School Events Revisited," ''Antitrust Law and Economics Review''
Preview.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bain, Joe S. 1912 births 1991 deaths 20th-century American economists University of California, Los Angeles alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Distinguished Fellows of the American Economic Association