The Rise and Fall of Dominant Firms in the U.S. Automobile Industry: A Twice Told Tale.

The remainder of this chapter will be organized as follows: Section II will relate the experience of the first (Ford) era; Section III will provide a description of the second (GM) era. in both sections, we will describe first the rise of the firm to its dominant position, then its behavior ( and that of its smaller rivals) during period of dominance, the reasons for its decline, and finally an evaluation of the episode. Section IV will offer a brief conclusion that summarizes the insights that can be gained from these two separate occurences.