Four Major Market Structures

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There are four major market structures; perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly. Perfect competition is the market structure in which there are many sellers and buyers, firms produce a homogeneous product, and there is free entry into and exit out of the industry (Amacher & Pate, 2013). A perfect competition is characterized by the fact that homogeneous products are being created. With this being the case consumers have no tendency to buy one product over the other, because they are all the same. Perfect competitions are also set up so that there is companies are free to enter and leave a market as they choose. They are allowed to do with without any type of restriction, from either the government or the other companies. This structure is purely theoretical, and represents and extreme end of the market structure. The opposite end of the market structure from perfect competition is monopoly. Monopolies are when there is only one provider of a specific good, which has no alternatives. Monopolies can be either natural or artificial. Some of the natural monopolies a town will see are business such as utilities or for cities like Clarksville with only one, hospitals. With only one hospital and there not being another one for a two hour drive, Clarksville’s hospital has a monopoly on emergency care, because there is not another option for this type of service in the area. Artificial monopolies are created using a variety of means from allowing others to enter the market. Artificial monopolies are generally rare or absent because of anti-trust laws that were designed to prevent this in legitimate businesses. However, while these two are the ends of the spectrum, the majority of businesses wil... ... middle of paper ... ...ts with higher barriers, all trying to compete for these profits. Works Cited 2010 population finder. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/ Amacher, R., & Pate, J. (2013). Microeconomics principles and policies. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Orr , D. (1974). An index of entry barriers and its application to the market structure performance relationship. Journal of Industrial Economics, 23(1), 11-39. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/eds/detail?sid=25f46629-86ce-4fba-b338-6ba319c80f42@sessionmgr4004&vid=1&hid=4210&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLW xpdmU= Schaefer, S. (2013). Detroit files biggest municipal bankruptcy on record. Forbes Magazine, Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/eds/detail? vid=2&sid=b6189574-03df-4c57-b7ad-a175dc56aebf@sessionmgr113&hid=102 &bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU=

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