Different Market structures | Flashcards
Perfect Competition
Ideal market structure, many sellers, many buyers, identical products, no barriers to entry; total competition.
Imperfect Competition
Any market structure except perfect competition
Monopolistic competition
Market structure where there are many firms, differentiated products, few barriers to entry
Oligopoly
Market structure with few firms and high barriers to entry
Ways to identify market structure
- Count the number of firms
- Use a concentration ratio
- By evaluating Barriers to entry
- By considering importance of economies of scale to the firms
Types of barriers to entry
- Legal barriers
- Market barriers
- Cost barriers
- Physical Barriers
- Barrier to exit
Perfect competition
Large number of buyers and sellers, no individual firm has impact on market, homogenous products, complete freedom of entry into and exit from market all firms and consumers have complete information
Oligopoly
Market dominated by few firms whos decisions impact the entire market
Price competition
Firms compete on price to attract customers
Non-price competition examples
- Advertising and promotions
- Product innovation
- Brand proliferation
- Market segmentation
- Process innovation
Contestability
Extent to which barriers to entry and exit are expensive
Deregulation
When barriers to entry are removed in an industry