Perfect Competition, Historically Contemplated

Abstract

No concept in economics — or elsewhere — is ever defined fully, in the sense that its meaning under every conceivable circumstance is clear. Even a word with a wholly arbitrary meaning in economics, like ‘elasticity’, raises questions which the person who defined it (in this case, Marshall) never faced: for example, how does the concept apply to finite changes or to discontinuous or stochastic or multiple-valued functions ? And of course a word like ‘competition’, which is shared with the whole population, is even less likely to be loaded with restrictions or elaborations to forestall unfelt ambiguities. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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