A Model of Simple Competition

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Joel Cohen attempts to define some formally equivalent aspects of certain competitive situations in economics and in biology and to present a common mathematical model of them. On the basis of data from several large American industries, he finds that, if the capacity to produce or the sales of competing companies are ranked in order of size, these measures of success follow a pattern much the same as that found previously in the outcomes of certain biological competitions. His results suggest the use of a new kind of model in economics by showing the applicability of abstractions developed in biological problems to concrete economic situations.