Joe Staten Bain, 1912-1991, was an American economist. He spent his whole career as a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, although he obtained his Doctorate in Harvard under Joseph Schumpeter.
He was a prolific and seminal writer and is considered as father of modern industrial organisation theory, for which he was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.
Regarding industrial organisation, Bain took special interest in market structures, developing the Structure, Conduct and Performance paradigm (SCP). His analyses were focused around oligopolies, and on entry and exit barriers. Bain’s analyses are also characterized for being mostly verbal instead of mathematical. From his many written papers and books, we can highlight “Barriers to New Competition”, 1956, and his magnum opus “Industrial Organization”, 1959, as his most influencing works.
Although Bain’s main contribution was to the industrial organisation field, he also contributed greatly to strategic managementand his “Pricing, Distribution and Employment: Economics of an Enterprise System” 1948 and “Price Theory”, 1952, stand out as his most important work regarding this field.