Is Imperfect Competition Empirically Empty?

During the past few years, imperfect competition seems to be coming into its own. Models of product differentiation, in particular, are now a standard vehicle in which to discuss many issues in industrial organization and in international trade. Yet this resurgence of interest in the area has failed to dispel a long-standing concern, shared by many economists, that imperfect competition is ‘empirically empty’-the particularly pungent dismissal of the theory in George Stigler’s Nobel address of 1982 is a recent echo of older debates.