A monopoly is a market structure, where there is only one supplier or entity of a good or service in the market. In reality, a firm is categorised in UK as a monopoly when it has at least 25% market share (Economics Help, 2012). Monopolies can emerged from “exclusive ownership of a scarce resource, granted monopoly status by the government, exclusive patents or copyright to sell a product or protect their intellectual property” (Economics online, anon) or mergers and acquisitions to sell a good or service. One of the key characteristics for a monopoly is that the monopoly firm is a price maker because there is lack of competition. This position allows the firm to obtain abnormal profit in the long run when it operates at the profit maximising point, where marginal cost equals marginal revenue.
A monopoly is the sole seller of its product so it is in “a position of economic strength” because there is no competition, the monopoly can “behave to an appreciable extent independently of its competitors, customers and ultimately of its consumers” without losing market share. The definition represents an oligopoly to an extent because oligopolies do have competition in their market with other firms producing similar or identical products. Therefore they cannot act independently of its competitors. However, oligopolies are price makers and are in a position of economic strength. The definition is more fitting to oligopolies that collude and form cartels because they become more like a monopoly.
Thusly, the firm has the whole market for itself. Cross elasticity of demand between the monopolist’s products is either null or sufficiently little to be neglected by all firms in the economy. At the point when the monopolist makes decision on pricing, it does not consider activities and possible retaliations of firms in other industries. The monopolist can apply some influence on price, output, and demand for its product. The market demand curve set limit for the monopolist’s market.
A free market competition is better than a monopolistic competition because there is little constraint for people to enter or start a business in the market and consumers are able to set the price based on the demand vs. supply concept. A clear
Even with the items cited, the theory that these industries are natural monopolies were clearly rebutted. It was even explained that competition between companies in these industries have given consumers great
A monopoly is characterized when a single supplier in the entire market own a specific product, so that from that specific product, or products, they own the entire market share. A monopoly is also defined when a company own 25% of that market, meaning they have a huge part of the market share. There are many reasons why a monopoly may form for a specific product. One of the reasons is when a company has the ownership of a specific requirement for one specific product, and example is how Apple owns the IO Software. Microsoft owning the Windows software, so in that are they are monopolizing that market, with those specific software.
Monopolistic: Monopolistic competition is a market structure in which a large number of sellers sale close substitution products. In this type of market, the goods produced and sold different, but they are close substitution of each other. Monopolistic competition is a combination of perfect competition and monopoly. There are various examples of this type of market and some of these are the market of goods such as shoes, books, watches, toothpaste,
An oligopoly is an intermediate market structure between the extremes of perfect competition and monopoly. Oligopoly firms might compete (noncooperative oligopoly) or cooperate (cooperative oligopoly) in the marketplace. Whereas firms in an oligopoly are price makers, their control over the price is determined by the level of coordination among them. The distinguishing characteristic of an oligopoly is that there are a few mutually interdependent firms that produce either identical products (homogeneous oligopoly) or heterogeneous products (differentiated oligopoly) (Rajeev K. Goel, 2014, P183) There are two main characteristics of oligopoly, including small number of firms and interdependence. There are only a few manufacturers in the industry.
Most consumers buy from them and they therefore influence the price of all subsequent firms. Lastly are monopolies where there is a single
According to Nellis & Parker (2006), monopolistic competitive markets exist where there are many organisations selling products or services that are comparable, but have slight degrees of differentiation from each other. Nellis et al, further elaborate on the pricing discretion, stating that it is limited and consumers within this market can switch to alternative suppliers according to their needs and desires. (Nellis & Parker. 2006) Nellis & Parker (2006) described the conditions and circumstances that lead to a monopolistic competitive market, these include: 1. A large number of organisations competing: AIC competes against a collective of 93 licensed insurance companies trading.