CURRENTLY the suggestion made in the UK that our industrial structure may be partly responsible for our economic difficulties seems to be gaining accept- ance. The recent rapid growth in industrial concentration, and its counter- part, the relative decline in the economic significance of the small firm, are features not unequivocally accepted as beneficial to the more efficient func- tioning of industry. Prais [22, p. I60] in his recent book wonders 'whether the elimination of small firms has not gone too far here, and whether the rigidity of the economy and its undistinguished progress is not, at least partly, attributable to the lack of small entrepreneurs'. Meeks [17] has suggested that growth through merger may be only weakly correlated with improved efficiency while the link between growth through new investment and efficiency is much clearer