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Distinguish between monopolistic competition and oligopoly
Essay on monopolies
Oligopoly
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Title page
Name: Benjamin Kusi
Question: “A single-price monopoly will always charge a price that is on the elastic range of the demand for the monopoly’s output.” Discuss using relevant diagrams or algebra.”
According to TIMOTHY J. PERRI, he explains that a monopoly is a firm who is the sole seller of its product, and where there are no close substitutes. (WINTER 1984) Monopoly arises as a result of many factors coming to play into the existence of a monopoly. Some of these factors are the location and owning of a key resource by a firm, an exclusive right given to a firm by a government to produce a certain kind of good, and a very high cost of producing a good and among others. As a result of there being a monopoly, it gives
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Some monopoly firms practice price discrimination and others do not. Price discrimination is a pricing strategy that involves selling the same good or product to different people at different prices. This means that the seller charges each buyer of his or her product, the highest amount that the buyer is willing and able to pay. With respect to a single price monopoly, Chester S. Spatt explains that, the producer sells each unit of its output (product or goods) at the same price to all of its customers.(Apr., 1983). As such, there are factors that makes a single-price monopoly always charge a price that is on the elastic range of its demand for its output. Some of these factors …show more content…
The market supply curve in a perfect competitive market is the horizontal summation of all the individual firm’s marginal cost. This mathematically means that S = MC. And this curve represents the monopoly’s marginal cost curve. Equilibrium in perfect competition occurs where the quantity demanded of a good is equal to the quantity supplied at quantity (QC ) and price (PC.) Whereas equilibrium output for a monopoly, QM, occurs where marginal revenue equals marginal cost, MR = MC. And its price, PM, occurs on the demand curve at the profit-maximizing quantity. Because marginal revenue is less than price at each output level, QM < QC and PM > PC. Comparing this to that of a perfect competitive market, monopoly limits its output and charges a greater price that is on the elastic range of demand as shown in the diagram
I have never had a strong opinion on monopolies in Canada. However, I believe that monopolies can stifle innovation, competition, and affect the prices that the consumer has to pay for a product or service. Since we live in a mixed market economy, Canada has very few monopolies such as the health, airspace, and telecommunications industries. Companies within theses industries are notorious for price fixing, lack of innovation, and competition. These problems are prevalent because of the barriers to entry the new players face such government regulation, the cost of doing business, and infrastructure.
Just as certain conditions existed for a perfectly competitive market, the same goes for the monopoly form of a market. The first condition exists when only one firm operates in the market. Due to this condition, the monopoly firm equates to the market, meaning the firm sets whatever price it desires. The next condition pertains to barriers of entry. Barriers to entry occur when the monopolizing firm prevents any other firm from entering the market. Many ways of doing this exist, one way will be examined when looking at the corn market. The last condition of a monopoly occurs when no close substitutes can be found. This states no other product has the potential to substitute in place of the firm’s product. These condition apply to the corn market in Tap. The Mega Company remains the only firm selling corn in the market. They achieve this by purchasing all of the farmers’ corn and then selling it in the market. This outcome satisfies the first condition. The second condition exists as barriers of entry. The Mega Company produces this effect by buying corn from all of the farmers. The farmers sell their corn to the Mega Company at a higher price than selling it directly to the people at market value. This allows the Mega Company to purchase all of the corn from the farmers, producing a barrier to entry in the market. In order for the Mega
A monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. A monopoly sells a good for which there is no close substitute. The absence of substitutes makes the demand for the good relatively inelastic thereby enabling monopolies to extract positive profits. It is this monopolizing of drug and process patents that has consumer advocates up in arms. The granting of exclusive rights to pharmacuetical companies over clinical a...
When a monopoly occurs because it is more efficient for one firm to serve an entire market than for two or more firms to do so, because of the sort of economies of scales available in that market. A common example is water distribution, in which the main cost is laying a network of pipes to deliver water.
An oligopoly is defined as "a market structure in which only a few sellers offer similar or identical products" (Gans, King and Mankiw 1999, pp.-334). Since there are only a few sellers, the actions of any one firm in an oligopolistic market can have a large impact on the profits of all the other firms. Due to this, all the firms in an oligopolistic market are interdependent on one another. This relationship between the few sellers is what differentiates oligopolies from perfect competition and monopolies. Although firms in oligopolies have competitors, they do not face so much competition that they are price takers (as in perfect competition). Hence, they retain substantial control over the price they charge for their goods (characteristic of monopolies).
When the word monopoly is spoken most immediately think of the board game made by Parker Brothers in which each player attempts to purchase all of the property and utilities that are available on the board and drive other players into bankruptcy. Clearly the association between the board game and the definition of the term are literal. The term monopoly is defined as "exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices" (Dictionary.com, 2008). Monopolies were quite common in the early days when businesses had no guidelines whatsoever. When the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into break up the Standard Oil business in the late 1800’s and enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (Wikipedia 2001), it set forth precedent for many cases to be brought up against it for years to come.
Price discrimination can be defines as when a firm offers an “individual good at different prices to different consumers” The Library of Economics and Liberty elaborates on its pricing strategy, stating Comcast offers different pricing depending on what features the consumer desires. For instance, the cable company will charge a higher price to a person who uses several services as part of their cable package. Conversely, the firm charges a very low price to someone who would “otherwise not be interested” , providing basic services at a minimum price. It takes advantage of the regulation imposed on the cable industry by offering the required basic package at seemingly attractive prices. Using this pricing system allows for it to attract different consumers whose maximum price they are willing to pay differs. Recently, Comcast attempted a new billing strategy by introducing a data usage cap. It essentially expanded on the company’s existing price discrimination method by charging customers according to how much data they used each month. Comcast also utilizes penetration pricing, where it offers its product at low prices to attract new consumers, later raising the prices once the customer is subscribed for a certain amount of time. Generally it claims the original prices were promotional only, lasting only a small amount of
By law a monopoly is not allowed to exist in the US. It has been long debated whether Microsoft is a monopoly or not? Among other charges Microsoft was charged with "monopolizing the computer operating system market, integrating the Internet Explorer web browser into the operating system in an attempt to eliminate competition from Netscape, and using its market power to form anticompetitive agreements with producers of related goods" (SWLearning).
A monopoly is a market structure in which there is a single seller (Hendrikse, 2003) indicating the incumbent firm has price setting power- and the buyers are price takers. Remaining as a monopoly can have advantages in terms of market power, controlling and dictating the market, meaning they can charge prices that are abnormally profitable.
A Monopoly is a market structure characterised by one firm and many buyers, a lack of substitute products and barriers to entry (Pass et al. 2000). An oligopoly is a market structure characterised by few firms and many buyers, homogenous or differentiated products and also difficult market entry (Pass et al. 2000) an example of an oligopoly would be the fast food industry where there is a few firms such as McDonalds, Burger King and KFC that all compete for a greater market share.
Well the bottom line is that a monopoly is firm that sells almost all the goods or services in a select market. Therefore, without regulations, a company would be able to manipulate the price of their products, because of a lack of competition (Principle of Microeconomics, 2016). Furthermore, if a single company controls the entire market, then there are numerous barriers to entry that discourage competition from entering into it. To truly understand the hold a monopoly firm has on the market; compare the demand curves between a Perfect Competitor and Monopolist firm in Figure
Markets have four different structures which need different "attitudes" from the suppliers in order to enter, compete and effectively gain share in the market. When competing, one can be in a perfect competition, in a monopolistic competition an oligopoly or a monopoly [1]. Each of these structures ensures different situations in regards to competition from a perfect competition where firms compete all being equal in terms of threats and opportunities, in terms of the homogeneity of the products sold, ensuring that every competitor has the same chance to get a share of the market, to the other end of the scale where we have monopolies whereby one company alone dominates the whole market not allowing any other company to enter the market selling the product (or service) at its price.
A monopoly is “a single firm in control of both industry output and price” (Review of Market Structure, n.d.). It has a high entry and exit barrier and a perceived heterogeneous product. The firm is the sole provider of the product, substitutes for the product are limited, and high barriers are used to dissuade competitors and leads to a single firm being able to ...
An oligopolistic market has a small number of sellers dominating market share and therefore barriers to entry are high. These sellers are highly competitive and do not act independently of each other. Access to information is limited so sellers can only speculate of their competitor’s actions. Sellers will take advantage of competitor’s price changes in order to increase market share.
The second market structure is a monopolistic competition. The conditions of this market are similar as for perfect competition except the product is not homogenous it is differentiated; thus having control over its price. (Nellis and Parker, 1997). There are many firms and freedom of entry into the industry, firms are price makers and are faced with a downward sloping demand curve as well as profit maximizers. Examples include; restaurant businesses, hotels and pubs, specialist retailing (builders) and consumer services (Sloman, 2013).