Similarities And Differences Between Monopolies And Oligopoly

In Economics people learn about monopolies, oligopolies and how they work. Monopolies and oligopolies are not only different in many ways, but also have some similarities. Monopoly is defined by the dominance of just one seller in the market; oligopoly is an economic situation in which a number of sellers populate or add to the market. They both revolve around supply and demand. Supply and demand meaning product, or service available and the desire of buyers for it, considered as factors regulating its price. Consumer don’t always know the similarities and differences in monopoly and oligopoly. There are many differences in monopolies and oligopolies such as their characteristics, their ways of entries or difficulties to join the business and their different prices.

Monopoly is the structure in which there is a single seller of products with no close substitutes, so the single seller can have much market power. A monopoly can be recognized by certain characteristics that makes it different from other markets. Monopolies can maximize profits, they can decide on the prices of the goods or product being sold and they can make it so that other sellers are unable to enter the market of

Monopoly is hard to enter because of technology, patents and government regulation when Oligopoly is hard to enter because of the economic scale. Overall, they both are firms but monopoly is a single firm and oligopoly has small numbers of firms. Monopoly can set their prices to whatever and oligopoly has to have fair pricing due to competition. There are many differences but not similarities. Oligopoly is a growing company and monopoly is staying the same. My reason for contrasting these two things were so that people can know what markets they are using. The number one oligopoly company is Wal-Mart and it is always in competition with a few other major