Imperfect Competition Essay

Both potential and existing competitors influence average industry profitability. The threat of new entrants is usually based on the market entry barriers. They can take diverse forms and are used to prevent an influx of firms into an industry whenever profits, adjusted for the cost of capital, rise above zero. In contrast, entry barriers exist whenever it is difficult or not economically feasible for an outsider to replicate the incumbents’ position (Porter, 1980b; Sanderson, 1998) The most common forms of entry barriers, except intrinsic physical or legal obstacles, are as follows:

Threat of New Entrants - The easier it is for new companies to enter the industry, the more cutthroat competition there will be. Factors that can limit the threat of new entrants are known as barriers to entry. Some examples include:

2. (Price Leadership) why might a price–leadership model of oligopoly not be an effective means of collusion in an oligopoly?

Factors that can limit the threat of new entrants are known as barriers to entry. In this case barriers to entry are low because: there is no government intervention to prevent businesses from entering the industry, resources are abundant, and customers’ switching costs are low as well as fixed costs to start this type of business.

There are many models of market structure in the field of economics. They include perfect competition on one end, monopoly on the other end, and competitive monopoly and oligopoly somewhere in the middle. In this paper, we will focus on the oligopoly structure because it is one of the strongest influences in the United States market. Although oligopolies can also be global, we will focus strictly on the United States here. We will define oligopoly, give key characteristics important to the oligopoly structure, explain why oligopolies form, then give an example of an oligopoly in today’s economy. Finally, we will discuss the benefits and costs in this type of market structure.

(7) A monopolist can discriminate prices for his product, a firm working under perfect competition cannot. The monopolist will be increasing his total profit by price discrimination if he find? Elastic ties of demand are different in different markets.

As illustrated by Sloman and Hinde (2007), an Oligopoly by nature has price stability, even when there has been no collusion between firms. This theory is based on two assumptions. For example, if Tate and Lyle were to lower their prices, British Sugar and the other rivals would feel the need to follow suit to prevent losing customers to Tate and Lyle. Contrastingly, if British Sugar raised their prices, Tate and Lyle would not follow suit. They would keep their prices the same and gain customers from British Sugar. The kinked demand model illustrates this.

Competition within the industry as well as market supply and demand conditions set the price of products sold.

Potential New Entrants: The barriers for entry for this product are low. The use of the internet by the end consumer also tends to lower this barrier.

Threat to new entrants: There is no barrier to entry in this industry but it might be difficult for newcomers to compete against existing well establishing companies.

This is also linked into the behaviour of the buyers in the market. Buyers are also price takers because they can purchase as much as they wish without influencing the market price. The final assumption is important when considering the long term equilibrium price of a firm in perfect competition. This assumption is that entry into the market is free and that there are no barriers to entry. Any costs incurred are incurred by all of the suppliers; an entrant will pay no additional cost for entering the firm.

Barriers to Entry: The entry barriers in the market are relatively low, making it easy to access. However, as the market is saturated it could be unlikely for new companies to decide to start new enterprises in this field.

Competition within the industry as well as market supply and demand conditions set the price of products sold.

Barriers to entry- there can either be high barriers to entry which makes the market unattractive and hard for new entrants or there can be low barriers to enter which make it easy for new entrants in the market.

a) In a perfect competitive market, the sole determinant of pricing is the market demand and the supply curves. A demand curve refers to the total amount that consumers will pay for their products. The supply curve is the total amount that the producers can actually make to supply to the company at the price they can afford or are willing to pay. Another factor in a perfect competitive market structure is the equilibrium price which is basically when the supply of the market meets the market demand of the consumers. Anther unique feature of a perfect competition market is that it is a price taker. In essence, this means that the company doesn’t have any influence on the price. Again, this can only be caused through a market that has a large number of firms with identical products. (Samuelson and Marks, 2010).