ABSTRACT
One basic tenet of institutional economics is the existence and exercise of power and coercion in the community’s economic decisionmaking processes. The literature on the existence and exercise of economic power can be categorized into three main groupings—market power in non-regulated industries, market power in regulated industries, and the autarchical powers inherent in and derived from the institution of centralized private sector planning. In order to determine the approximate size of the economy’s centrally planned sector, the chapter presents two additional concepts—satellite and peripheral industries. Corporate leaders in the economy’s centrally planned sector are often capable of exercising plenary power over the enactment and enforcement of legislation passed by the country’s governmental bodies. The food processing industry to which farmers must sell their products, while often depicted as an example of a competitive market structure consisting in 1984 of some 22,130 businesses, is in reality dominated by a very few firms.
