Joe Staten Bain (4 July 1912,

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

– 7 September 1991,

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

) 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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. 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, with approximately 23,000 members. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Review, an ...

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 per ...

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.
Extract
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Background and career

Bain received an A.B. from UCLA in 1935. He studied at

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

, where he was also an Economics instructor from 1936 to 1939. There he received an M.A. in 1939 and Ph.D. 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 ...

under the direction of

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

Edward Chamberlin Edward Hastings Chamberlin (May 18, 1899 – July 16, 1967) was an American economist. He was born in La Conner, Washington, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chamberlin studied first at the University of Iowa (where he was influenced by ...

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 economics that studies the behavior of individuals and Theory of the firm, firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarcity, scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. M ...

."• 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 Formality, formal and systematic written discourse on some subject concerned with investigating or exposing the main principles of the subject and its conclusions."mwod:treatise, Treatise." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Acc ...

'' (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. The word ''paradigm'' is Ancient ...

of structure, conduct, and performance as related to the industry, 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'', formerly known as the ''American Law Register'', 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 ...

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

barriers to entry In theories of Competition (economics), 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 (economics) ...

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. Market concentration is the portion of a given market's m ...

was analyzed concerning

market power In economics, market power refers to the ability of a theory of the firm, 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 othe ...

and

rate of profit In economics and finance, the profit rate is the relative profitability of an investment project, a capitalist enterprise or a whole capitalist economy. It is similar to the concept of rate of return on investment. Historical cost ''vs.'' mark ...

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 first published by the American Economic Association in 1911. The current editor-in-chief is Erzo FP Luttmer, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. The journal is ...

'', 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 Edward Hastings Chamberlin (May 18, 1899 – July 16, 1967) was an American economist. He was born in La Conner, Washington, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chamberlin studied first at the University of Iowa (where he was influenced by ...

, 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