Take a look at research and texts in many areas and you'll find the same
references and bibliographies repeated over and over. In my own area, Kaplan
and Cooper are the stars of Activity Based Costing and a whole host of other
things: in reality, non financial managers were way ahead of this pair and
many management accountants; but these two were the first to go into print
and ended up in places like the Harvard Business Review. Gurus were born. In
terms of capital budgeting, Richard Pike is a name that used to be
everywhere: read his work critically, however, and you might come to a
similar conclusion to the one. Chris has just mentioned vis a vis oligopoly:
massses or assertions, surveys of businesses that were (a) always based on
postal delivery and (b) always taken from the biggest companies that were
hardly representative of the economy, and the subject, as a whole ... to
name but two!
If it's of interest, Cooper (a Brit, whilst Kaplan is a Yank) has virtually
sunk without trace in many respects yet Kaplan continues to add to his pile.
I saw Kaplan speak at a conference in New York a few years ago and whilst I
was excited at the prospect, his presentation was dire. I think he was
setting off on a lecture tour and this conference was the first time he'd
delivered on this topic: he lost his slides, forgot what he meant to say and
burble, burbled! I should stress that Kaplan is a talented writer and
researcher, in my opinion at least.
Duncan Williamson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Rodda" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2002 7:10 AM
Subject: Criticism of Oligopoly
> Yet another inspection copy of a text thumps on the desk.
>
> My test is to look at section on oligopoly - 9 time out of 10, I read this
> sentence. "one criticism of Sweezey's model is that it does not explain
how
> the original price was arrived at."
>
> This seems pretty vacuous to me as critcisim as I can think of a dozen
ways
> at which the price was arrived at - and Hall and Hitch suggested cost plus
> pricing in 1939. So what I'd like to know is just who made this critisim
and
> why do authors keep on repeating this tired phrase - can anyone help?
>
>
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