Edward Hastings Chamberlin (May 18, 1899 – July 16, 1967) was an American economist. He was born in La Conner, Washington.
Chamberlin studied first at the University of Iowa (where he was influenced by Frank H. Knight), then pursued graduate-level studies at the University of Michigan, eventually receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1927.
For most of his career Edward Chamberlin taught economics at Harvard (1937–1967). He made significant contributions to microeconomics, particularly on competition theory and consumer choice, and their connection to prices. Edward Chamberlin coined the term "product differentiation" to describe how a supplier may be able to charge a greater amount for a product than perfect competition would allow.
His most significant contribution was the theory of monopolistic competition. Chamberlin published his book The Theory of Monopolistic Competition in 1933, the same year that Joan Robinson published her book on the same topic: The Economics of Imperfect Competition, so these two economists can be regarded as the parents of the modern study of imperfect competition.
Chamberlin's theory of monopolistic competition is used by sociologist Harrison White in his "markets from networks" model of market structure and competition.
The works of Chamberlin, Robinson, and other contributors to the "Structure-Conduct-Performance" paradigm were heavily discounted by game theorists in the 1960s, but Nobel-Prize winner Paul Krugman and others built the foundations of the "new theory of international trade" by combining such theories of industrial structure with production functions that assumed significant economies of scale and scope.