| Summary: | <p class="Body">In order for the concept of the market to play a significant and non-contradictory role in economic (and antitrust) analysis, two conditions must be fulfilled. First, the characteristics of demand must be such as to demarcate a market unequivocally. Second, the competition in a specific market must have limited interaction with the rest of the economy. In general, these conditions cannot be met. First, the non-constancy of the elasticity of the demand function means that the size of the market depends on its structure and on the behaviour of its agents. Second, given differentiated products, the competitive relations between them will be heterogeneous, giving rise to as many market segments as there are individual products. Third, supply-side substitutability, i.e. the possibility of using a given technique to produce several products (not all in the same market) ensures that intra-industry economic dynamics prevail over intra-market ones. Finally, multi-market contacts between firms generate overall strategic conduct, making analysis of any particular market irrelevant.</p><p class="Body"> </p><p class="Body"> </p><p class="Body"><strong>JEL Codes:</strong> K21, L40</p><p class="Body"> </p>
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