In his recently published tome "The Free-Market Innovation Machine - Analysing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism", William Baumol of Princeton University, concurs. He daringly argues that productive innovation is at its most prolific and qualitative in oligopolistic markets. Because firms in an oligopoly characteristically charge above-equilibrium (i.e., high) prices - the only way to compete is through product differentiation. This is achieved by constant innovation - and by incessant advertising. Baumol maintains that oligopolies are the real engines of growth and higher living standards and urges antitrust authorities to leave them be. Lower regulatory costs, economies of scale and of scope, excess profits due to the ability to set prices in a less competitive market - allow firms in an oligopoly to invest heavily in research and development. A new drug costs c. $800 million to develop and get approved, according to Joseph DiMasi of Tufts University's Center for the Study of Drug Development, quoted in The wall Street Journal. In a paper titled "If Cartels Were Legal, Would Firms Fix Prices", implausibly published by the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice in 1997, Andrew Dick demonstrated, counterintuitively, that cartels are more likely to form in industries and sectors with many producers. The more concentrated the industry - i.e., the more oligopolistic it is - the less likely were cartels to emerge. Cartels are conceived in order to cut members' costs of sales. Small firms are motivated to pool their purchasing and thus secure discounts. Dick draws attention to a paradox: mergers provoke the competitors of the merging firms to complain. Why do they act this way? Mergers and acquisitions enhance market concentration. According to conventional wisdom, the more concentrated the industry, the higher the prices every producer or supplier can charge. Why would anyone complain about being able to raise prices in a post-merger market? Apparently, conventional wisdom is wrong. Market concentration leads to price wars, to the great benefit of the consumer. This is why firms find the mergers and acquisitions of their competitors worrisome. America's soft drink market is ruled by two firms - Pepsi and Coca- Cola. Yet, it has been the scene of ferocious price competition for decades. "The Economist", in its review of the paper, summed it up neatly: "The story of America's export cartels suggests that when firms decide to co-operate, rather than compete, they do not always have price increases in mind. Sometimes, they get together simply in order to cut costs, which can be of benefit to consumers". The very atom of antitrust thinking - the firm - has changed in the last two decades. No longer hierarchical and rigid, business resembles self-assembling, nimble, ad- hoc networks of entrepreneurship superimposed on ever- shifting product groups and profit and loss centers.