Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Dynamics Of Firm Behavior Under Alternative Cost Structures, George A. Hay

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A large and growing number of studies attempt to determine the important factors affecting firms' decisions with respect to price, output, and inventories. A striking feature of this literature is the embarrassingly large number of alternative models—all allegedly consistent with the principles of profit maximization—which are used to justify various reduced form or behavioral equations to be estimated with the appropriate firm or industry data.

It is rare, however, that the equations to be estimated are derived rigorously from the underlying model. Because of this, the restrictions placed on the equations to be estimated are often limited at worst to …