General Characteristics of the CPI

Firms in the oligopoly environment are motivated and influenced by a set of outside forces that represent carrots and sticks— technological, economic, and sociopolitical. To succeed in this environment, firms must develop patterns of behavior for both short- and long-term survival. We discuss and analyze these forces and the resulting patterns of behavior in this chapter. 

Many important industries, such as automobiles and steel, concentrate on producing essentially one product. In contrast, the CPI produce an astounding variety of products by a myriad of processes in many different and widely scattered plants. Most chemical companies produce hundreds of separate products. Moreover, the industry consists of hundreds of separate chemical companies, so that even the largest companies account for a smaller share of the chemical industry 

2621 Paper mills except building paper mills 29 49 

Source U.S. Bureau of Census, Subject Series Concentration Ratios in Manufacturing, 1992 (published in 1997). This document is published approximately every 5 years. The 1997 data will not be available until after 2000. 

The concentration ratios for selected industries are presented in Table 8.1. This ratio measures the percentage of an industry s economic activity that is accounted for by the four and eight largest companies. These data are compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Census and published at 5-year intervals. The data in Tables 

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