Industrial organisation, the degree of monopoly and macroeconomic performance – a perspective on the contribution of Keith Cowling (1936-2016)

Keith Cowling became a pioneer and key figure in a number of areas in industrial economics, including mergers and acquisitions, advertising, the theoretical determination of Structure, Conduct Performance (SCP) relationships and the welfare losses of monopoly power. He was informed and motivated by real life challenges of real life people and aimed to find solutions that fostered social welfare by leveraging the power of theory and evidence. In mainstream IO he was mostly famed for his work on SCP and monopoly power. Building upon this contribution, Keith also became renowned for being critical of contemporary capitalism, arguing that its concentration tendencies rendered it prone to abuse of corporate power and paved the way to stagnation and crises. In doing so, he provided an insight into how the micro (firm and industry) level-foundations of the industrial economy impacted upon macro-economic performance. He cross-fertilised mainstream and radical approaches to economics and was widely respected for his conceptual, mathematical and empirical rigour. In this paper, we highlight his major contributions in the fields of IO, international political economy and public policy.