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The article discusses aspects of the Spokane, Washington wholesale market. A study of the market was conducted from 1949-1951. The objectives of the study were to determine the extent of the trading area for major wholesale lines, to identify trends in the market, and to obtain competitor information. Researchers found that the wholesale market was dominated by the regular, or merchant, wholesaler. Competition between the Spokane wholesale market and other large U.S. city wholesalers was significantly influenced by transportation costs and distance. The study revealed that there exists some tendency for the market area to move eastward and that some decentralization had taken place.

In this article consumer store choice preferences are linked to retail trading areas by a new measure of the forces of geographical competition in marketing. Initial examination suggests that existing methodology does not model the overlap between intraurban trading areas correctly. The new measure may also offer improved opportunities for the study of consumer propensity to search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first purpose of the present paper is to examine empirically the importance of intra-industry trade under the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) used by the majority of countries today. In Part II, we examine first Australia's trade, analyzing the magnitude of intra-industry trade as a function of different levels of aggregation from 7-digit to 1-digit SITC classes, and consider whether intra-industry trade is a real phenomenon or an accident of statistical aggregation. Second, we measure the magnitude of intra-industry trade for the major industrial countries of the OECD at the most widely-used 3-digit level of aggregation. The second major objective of this paper is to present some evidence on the causes of the phenomenon of intra-industry trade. This evidence is useful for choosing the level of aggregation for empirical studies and for assessing the significance of intra-industry trade. The phenomenon of intra-industry trade calls for a re-examination of the traditional Heckscher-Ohlin models of international trade. In one way the phenomenon resembles the Leontief paradox, which gave new directions to empirical and theoretical work in international economics without, however, changing the validity of the basic principles of comparative advantage as derived in the Heckscher-Ohlin model. In other papers we have indicated how product differentiation by style, model, and quality can give rise to intra-industry trade [4], [5], [6], but unfortunately the series needed to test these hypotheses are not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the meaning of competition in economic theory. Probably the most general tendency concerning the meaning of competition in economic theory is to regard it as the opposite of monopoly. Monopoly is a market situation in which intra-industry competition has been defined away by identifying the firm as the industry. An unfortunate result of this way of thinking has been no little confusion concerning the relationship between economic efficiency and business behavior. Some of the ambiguity concerning the relationship between the idea of perfect competition and business behavior might perhaps have been avoided if Augustin Cournot had not designated the hypothesis of unlimited competition as the very state of affairs, which had earlier characterized as the effects of competition have reached their limit.