Industrial concentration and competition in Malaysian manufacturing

Industrial concentration is the most widely studied area among various elements of market structure in the industrial organization literature. This paper is a first attempt to analyse the determinants of changes in industry concentration over time in the case of Malaysia. Using a partial adjustment model, a cross-sectional analysis is carried out against a sample of manufacturing industries between 1986 and 1996. Domestic factors in influencing competition e.g. capital intensity, advertising intensity and market size are found to be significant in most cases to explain the level of concentration. Considering variable rate of adjustment of concentration, an increase in labour productivity of large firms and high entry rates are found to be significant for faster adjustment towards equilibrium level. Compared with other developed countries, the annual rate of structural adjustment is found to be slow in the case of Malaysian manufacturing.