Case Study Of Microeconomics: Hawaiian Electric A Monopolist Company

To understand how the collapse of the Repercussion affected the rise of monopolies, one needs to know what a monopoly is. A monopoly is a corporation or company that grew and took over smaller companies. The monopolies controlled the whole market and crushed all competition. There were two kinds of monopolies there are vertical and horizontal. Vertical monopolies controlled all of the companies that led up to the production of

The low price elasticity of demand for household energy given the lack of easy alternatives means that consumers will continue to purchase it even when prices rise drastically as we can see from extract A they did over the three year period. Furthermore the complex pricing structures in the energy market make it difficult for consumers to exercise any consumer sovereignty because they lack the information or indeed don’t know how to interpret it, to make a decision which is in their best interest.

1. I have experienced high rates first hand. It’s never fun paying $700 for one month of energy when your home claims to be energy efficient.

There are only a few firms that make up this industry and they have control over the price. These companies have high barriers to entry the market. The products they produce are similar which cause competition. There is both good and bad when it comes to oligopoly and monopolies. Some good things about oligopoly are by developing product innovations and taking advantage of economies of scale. With oligopoly it is more likely to expand production capabilities, promote economic growth, and they develop change that advances the level of technology ("Oligopoly," 2000). Some bad things about oligopoly is that they tend to be inefficient in the allocation of resources and promotes the concentration of income and wealth ("Oligopoly," 2000). They charge much higher prices and end up producing less of an output than the efficiency benchmark of perfect competition. One of the good forms is natural monopoly. Natural monopoly exists when economies of scale encourage production by a single producer (Mayer). An example of this is your local electrical utility. As a power plant increases, the cost per kilowatt hour of electricity falls (Mayer). If we were to all use small generators to run our homes the cost of each household would be ridiculous. The total fixed cost of generators for the community would be high and the variable cost of running it would also be high. Another form of monopoly that is good is

In 2007, Canada’s industries saved 2.1 billion U.S. dollars of energy costs (2007). All these numbers show Canada’s efforts in general public utilities.

Back when the America was divided in thirteen states, the commerce was small and still had many points to improve. As the time passed, these small business started to make commerce between different states, and, consequently, required the government to create laws regulating the commerce, such as the Interstate Commerce Act. With the help of the government, the economy started growing, and so, many monopolies started to appear and so to control business. Years later, these monopolies were much bigger and consequently, the prosperity of country was threatened since there were any competition, nor any incentive to provide best products opportunities. Therefore, the U.S. government was now required to create new laws regulating and intervening in the economy, even though going against the capitalist ideal.

With renewable sources and energy conservation becoming more prominent, there is a lower electricity usage. Many energy utilities are starting to take a hit because most of their income comes from customer charges. Companies have started to phase out charging customers based on electric usage and have switched to a fixed monthly fees that are at least $25 more per month. It is believed that companies should increase their fees by 1% every year to maintain the grid but since profit is decreasing, they are looking into a much higher fee. Vice President of the Edison Foundation, Lisa Wood, told the Wall Street Journal that there needs to be more money put into the electricity grid because of how complex it has

Each year the cost of designing, building, and maintaining renewable energy infrastructure and technology decreases. This trend is most prominently visible in the solar and wind industries which have both “seen stock prices jump since Congress approved an extension of tax credits for renewables” in late 2015 (Warrick). One cause for the renewable industry’s growth is the influx of investors. In November 2015, Goldman Sachs “quadruple[d] its investments in renewables to $150 billion,” a trend that has only become more prevalent in 2017 (Warrick). Part of the strong appeal of renewable energy is that it pays itself off over time. Instead of paying an electric bill every month, year after year, one can pay to have solar panels installed, that while initially expensive, never require additional payments. Not only are they free after the initial payment, some electric companies pay customers for installing panels and investing in clean energy. Many people complain that renewables produce far less power per dollar than coal, natural gas, and oil. While this may be true, the gap is quickly closing as renewable technology improves and prices drop. The convenience of only needing to pay once for renewable infrastructure far outweighs the greater power output that non-renewables provide for

Natural monopolies are cases in which production costs, infrastructure, and demand structure lead to a single monopolizing firm producing the good at lower cost than any other arrangement. Under such situations, firms will tend to over-charge and under-supply, causing a reduction in social surplus and an inefficient distribution of goods. A lack of competition is a fundamental violation of the idealized market assumptions. Little or no competition leads to inefficiencies of production and operation (Weimer and Vining p. 102). Furthermore, natural monopolies give an unfair and non-competitive advantage to firms that have entered the industry first. In cases of natural monopolies, government must typically regulate private industry in an attempt to maximize surplus, or, alternatively, government may provide the good or service publicly.

availability of substitutes 1, and the threat of retaliation from incumbents (by lowering price, for

To begin this speech, I will say that I will not join MAC as a Junior Executive, which means that I do not support AHS’ monopoly status. This is because monopolies are unethical and creates a disadvantage for the consumer, as well as ourselves. As a monopoly, the prices for the low calorie avocado would increase exponentially as we continue to pursue maximum profits, due to the lack of competition in the industry. Also, without competition, the innovations that brought us to this monopoly status will stagnate and diminish, as monopolies do not have the incentives to research and develop on their own. Despite this, monopolies can also be beneficial to the consumer in some ways, as they are able to develop new technologies or products on their

Monopolies have the potential to employ massive amounts of workers, and the potential to cause wide spread economic damage when they fail. Are these rewards worth the systemic risk to our economy, and every day life? American history is littered monopolies and large corporations that have caused, recessions, depressions, market crashes and economic uncertainty in the wake of their collapses. Monopolies also limit diversification to both consumers and to the marketplace in general, due to the nature that they would be the majority the market anyway. Monopolies also reduce competiveness and innovations in the economy. Regardless of the

|5000 employees at the beginning of the 1990s, it has grown to exports of $70 billion and 2.8 million employees today, and a globally dominating |

Has the economy ever thought about direct impact from monopoly and oligopoly industries? The structure of a monopoly based industry exemplifies one seller in the entire market. On the other hand, the concept of an oligopoly industry illustrates few sellers that have the potential of making a direct impact in one single industry idea. The economy has depended on the market share of a monopoly and an oligopoly trade. However, a monopoly industry differs from an oligopoly industry due to a monopoly competitor dominates a majority of the market share of many industries and an oligopoly competitor contains few sellers who dominate a market share based on one single industry idea.

Competition failure or monopoly may result from natural monopoly where it costs incurred in production becomes lower when only one firm is involved in production than several firms producing the same output. In a monopolist market under-production, higher prices become dominant contributing to market inefficiency. Winston cites cases of misuse of monopoly power can lead to market failures and sometimes may lead to acute shortage of essential commodities (130).