This collection of papers is the result of the conference ‘The Monopolistic Competition Revolution After 25 Years’ which was held at the University of Groningen on 30–31 October 2000. The main reason for organising a conference on this topic was that we realised that the second monopolistic competition revolution, initiated by Avinash Dixit and Joe Stiglitz in the 1970s, has been far more successful than the first monopolistic competition revolution that started in the 1930s. In sharp contrast to the first revolution, the second fundamentally influenced fields such as macroeconomics, international trade theory, growth theory and economic geography. It therefore seemed a good idea to ask the founding fathers of the second revolution why they thought that their reformulation has been so successful. Furthermore, we invited well-known international researchers in each of the above-mentioned fields to shed their light on the question. In addition we invited researchers that are currently active in these fields to provide an application of the Dixit-Stiglitz model and to show how it was useful in their current research. Hopefully this set-up has resulted in a interesting collection of papers. We have also included the previously unpublished working papers of Dixit and Stiglitz. These papers give a more comprehensive version of the basic model and also include extensions of the model that later had to be, independently, rediscovered by others.

This workshop is the fourth in a series of international conferences organised by the Economics Department of the University of Groningen.