Market forms
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In economics, market structure (also known as market form) describes the state of a market with respect to competition.
Most market forms given below talk about a homogeneous product. This simply means that they all make the same kind of product (like sugar, or soap), and that the individual consumer does not care where he or she buys from. They simply want to get the cheapest one, since all kinds of sugars (or soaps) look the same anyway.
The major market forms are:
- Perfect competition: there are many firms making a homogeneous product.
- Monopolistic competition, also called competitive market: there are a large number of independent firms. Each firm has a very small proportion of the market share.
- Oligopoly: A market is dominated by a small number of firms which own more than 40% of the market share.
- Oligopsony: A market dominated by many sellers and a few buyers.
- Monopoly: There is only one provider of a product or service.
- Natural monopoly: A monopoly in which economies of scale cause efficiency to increase continuously with the size of the firm.
- Monopsony: There is only one buyer in a market.
The imperfectly competitive structure is quite identical to the realistic market conditions where some monopolistic competitors, monopolists, oligopolists, and duopolists exist and dominate the market conditions.
These somewhat abstract concerns usually determine some but not all details of a specific concrete market system where buyers and sellers actually meet and commit to trade.
Market Structure | Seller Entry Barriers | Seller Number | Buyer Entry Barriers | Buyer Number |
---|---|---|---|---|
Perfect competition | No | Many | No | Many |
Monopolistic competition | No | Many | No | Many |
Oligopoly | Yes | Few | No | Many |
Oligopsony | No | Many | Yes | Few |
Monopoly | Yes | One | No | Many |
Monopsony | No | Many | Yes | One |
The correct sequence of the market stucture from most to least competitive is perfect competition, imperfect competition,oligopoly, and pure monopoly.
The main criteria by which one can distinguish between different market structures are: the number and size of producers and consumers in the market, the type of goods and services being traded, and the degree to which information can flow freely.
[edit] See also
- Economics
- Microeconomics
- Macroeconomics
- Industrial organization
- List of marketing topics
- List of management topics
- List of economics topics
- List of accounting topics
- List of finance topics
- List of economists
[edit] External links
- Microeconomics by Elmer G. Wiens: Online Interactive Models of Oligopoly, Differentiated Oligopoly, and Monopolistic Competition
Topics in microeconomics |
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Scarcity • Opportunity cost • Supply and demand • Elasticity • Economic surplus • Economic shortage • Aggregation of individual demand to total, or market, demand • Consumer theory • Production, costs, and pricing • Market forms • Welfare economics • Market failure |