Oligopoly Case Digest Analysis

Oligopoly is a market structure in which a few firms dominate the market (Jocelyn Blink & Ian Dorton, 2012). The market may have a large number of firms or just a few, but the important idea is that the industry’s output is shared by a small number of firms. It is possible for oligopolistic industries to differ, in the sense that some industries would produce the same kind of products, where the product is practically the same and only the companies name is different. On the other hand, there are also industries that produce completely different product and also ones that produce products that are only a bit different from each other, but these firms do tend to spend most of their budgets to advertise their products (Jocelyn Blink & Ian Dorton, 2012). There are a few main characterises of firms that operate as oligopolies these include:

United States antitrust law is a collection of federal and state government laws, which regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers. The four major pieces of legislation known as the Antitrust Laws include: The Sherman Act, The Clayton Antitrust Act, The Federal Trade Commission, and the Celler-Kefauver Act.

A) There were 4 particular Antitrust Laws that were enacted with the primary purpose of protecting consumers, striving to achieve fair competition in the market place, and to achieve and allocate efficiency. The 4 Antitrust Laws that are major pieces of legislation are;

Antitrust laws are federal and state government laws that regulate the conduct and organization or businesses. This helps promote fair competition for consumers. There are four main areas involving the

The Federal Trade Commission enforces a variety of federal antitrust and consumer protection laws. The Commission seeks to

Oligopoly is defined as a market structure in which there are a few major firms dominating the market in an industry. One of the defining factors is that each firm explicitly feeds off of the competitors' moves and their potential responses in regard to setting prices, launching new products, etc. Under this model there is a level of implied cooperation. The firms understand that it is in their own best interests to maintain a stable price. If one of the firms subsequently lowers their prices, their competitors will do the same and knock out any advantage the original firm was hoping to gain with lower prices. However, if they raise their prices, the competitors may not do the same and can keep their prices fixed which will allow them to gain more market share.

A market is defined as an institution that brings together buyers (demanders) and sellers (suppliers) of a particular good or service. A Market structure is the relationship among the buyers and sellers of a market and how prices are determined through outside influences. There are four different types of market structures. Two on opposite extremes, and two comfortably in the middle. On one end is perfect competition, which acts as a starting point in price and output determination. Pure competition is when a large number of firms sell a standardized product, entry and exit is very easy, and an individual firm cannot control the price. On the other extreme end is Pure monopoly. A monopoly is characterized by an absence of competition, which will often allow one seller to control the market. A Pure monopoly is essentially the same thing, but also includes near impossible entry and no substitute goods. Two more common market structures are monopolistic competition and oligopoly. Monopolistic competition has a large number of sellers producing different products, while an oligopoly has only a few number of sellers producing similar products. All in all pure competition, pure monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly are all unique market structures with differing characteristics, but have one main goal, profit maximization.

In a monopoly, a single company owns the market of a certain product. Some characteristics of a monopoly are that it only has one seller, is a

The administrative body established by the Fair Competition Act is the Fair Trading Commission(FTC) which is appointed by the government, has power to summon and examine documents, administer oaths and to take legal action in the Supreme Court against any business or individual found guilty of uncompetitive practices (Harinott

A monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of the supply or the trade of a commodity or a service. An example of a monopoly is when the U.S markets were

Oligopoly came from the Greek words where “oligos” means few and “polein” means to sell. Oligopolistic competition is a kind of imperfect competition where only a few firms make up the entire industry, which mean the majority of market share is owned by a small number of large firms, but never can be one. It can be said as a form of market structure which falls between perfect competition market and monopolistic market. (Reynolds, nd)

In oligopoly, industries are dominated by a small number of large firms, though in any one industry the firms are likely to vary in size. The concentration ratios of these firms tend to be fairly high. This means that, for example, the largest four firms in the industry accounts for 70% of the market share. The implication of this is that firms in oligopoly are interdependent. The actions of one firm will directly affect the others. Each of the large firms in the industry has to try and predict the actions of the others. They may collude to avoid this.

It is quite challenging to know about oligopoly by looking at the market structure of an industry. Sometimes the industry may have some of its subtypes but it may not use it for the profit. For instance, US may have hundreds of airlines but its not necessary that the entire airline in US for the same destination are competing with each other. There could only be one or two major airlines that may compete with each other like American and United.

Oligopoly is a market structure where there are a few firms producing all or most of the market supply of a particular good or service and whose decisions about the industry's output can affect competitors. Examples of oligopolistic structures are supermarket, banking industry and pharmaceutical industry.

A monopoly (from Greek monos μόνος (alone or single) + polein πωλεῖν (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity (this contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity 's control of a market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly which consists of a few entities dominating an industry).[2] Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the existence of a high monopoly price well above the firm 's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.[3] The verb "monopolise" refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices.[4] Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market).[4]