IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v49y1989i03p593-619_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Losing to Win: U.S. Steel's Pricing, Investment Decisions, and Market Share, 1901–1938

Author

Listed:
  • McCraw, Thomas K.
  • Reinhardt, Forest

Abstract

U.S. Steel held two-thirds of the American market in 1901, but by the 1930s its share had dropped to one-third. Such a decline is consistent with the economic theory of oligopoly pricing and capacity expansion, but the available data offer limited opportunities for formal testing of hypotheses. A close examination of U.S. Steel's early history leads us to argue that Chairman Elbert Gary's desire for price stability, his fear of antitrust litigation, and shortcomings in the firm's organizational capability constrained it from the unbridled pursuit of discounted profits that the economic theory assumes.

Suggested Citation

  • McCraw, Thomas K. & Reinhardt, Forest, 1989. "Losing to Win: U.S. Steel's Pricing, Investment Decisions, and Market Share, 1901–1938," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(3), pages 593-619, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:49:y:1989:i:03:p:593-619_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700008779/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christopher S. Decker & David T. Flynn, 2008. "Work‐Related Accidents And The Level Of Market Competition: An Analysis Of Worker Injury Rates At U.S. Steel Corporation, 1907–1939," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 46(3), pages 438-453, July.
    2. Carduff, Kevin C. & Fogarty, Timothy J., 2014. "Men of steel: Voluntary accounting information disclosure in the first third of the twentieth century at U.S. Steel Corporation," Research in Accounting Regulation, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 196-203.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:49:y:1989:i:03:p:593-619_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.