Users' questions

Why are monopolies not permitted in the United States?

Why are monopolies not permitted in the United States?

Competitors may be at a legitimate disadvantage if their product or service is inferior to the monopolist’s. But monopolies are illegal if they are established or maintained through improper conduct, such as exclusionary or predatory acts.

Are monopolies firms productively efficient?

Even though monopolistic competition does not provide productive efficiency or allocative efficiency, it does have benefits of its own. Product differentiation is based on variety and innovation.

What makes a monopoly inefficient?

Monopolies are inefficient compared to perfectly competitive markets because it charges a higher price and produces less output. Since the monopolist charges a price greater than its marginal cost, there is no allocative efficiency.

Is monopoly productively inefficient?

Monopoly firms will not achieve productive efficiency as firms will produce at an output which is less than the output of min ATC. X-inefficiency may occur since there is no competitive pressure to produce at the minimum possible costs.

What is the only business in the United States that is allowed to be a monopoly?

A strange outlier in the U.S. is the legal monopoly that sports corporations such as the NFL and MLB enjoy. They are legally protected from antitrust lawsuits and have enjoyed such protection since the 1920s.

What is the only legal monopoly in the United States?

For example, in the U.S., AT operated as a legal monopoly until 1982 because it was deemed vital to have cheap and reliable service that was readily available to everyone. Railroads and airlines have also been operated as legal monopolies, throughout different periods in history.

Are monopolies statically efficient?

Static efficiency and monopoly However, if a monopoly uses these supernormal profits to invest and develop new products/production techniques, then in the long-term it can lead to a more efficient outcome than maintaining static efficiency in the short-term.

Are monopolies efficient in the long-run?

In the long-run, a monopolistically competitive market is inefficient. It achieves neither allocative nor productive efficiency.

Is Denel a monopoly?

Denel (Pty) Ltd was established as a private company, incorporated in terms of the Companies Act on 1 April 1992 with the State as the sole shareholder. Denel can at present, without doubt, be regarded as a public monopoly.

Is perfect competition better than monopoly?

Explanation: The price in perfect competition is always lower than the price in the monopoly and any company will maximize its economic profit ( π ) when Marginal Revenue(MR) = Marginal Cost (MC). The company in the monopoly has a monopoly power and can set a markup to have a positive value for π .

Why are monopoly prices higher?

A monopoly’s profits are represented by π=p(q)q−c(q), where revenue = pq and cost = c. Monopolies have the ability to limit output, thus charging a higher price than would be possible in competitive markets.

Why is taxing a monopoly a bad idea?

Taxing monopolies only worsens their low usage of labor and capital. Yes, it’s too bad for the consumer that the new product costs so much — that’s the first feature of monopoly noted above — but that’s better than having no product at all. Taxing the profits of innovators discourages innovation.

What is the Productive inefficiency of a monopoly?

In monopoly, the production is made at a level which is less than minimum average cost due to which less quantity is produced and higher price is charged. This phenomenon can be better explained by comparing monopoly with perfect competition. The following graph will help you to understand the productive inefficiency in monopoly.

How is a monopoly different from perfect competition?

However, in the case of monopoly, the firm is not operating on the lowest point of its AC curve (point X ) but is instead operating on some higher point (point S). We can therefore conclude that in contrast to perfect competition, and assuming an absence of economies of scale, the monopolist will be productively inefficient.

Why do monopolists produce less than minimum cost?

This happens because a monopolist does not produce at minimum average cost. In monopoly, the production is made at a level which is less than minimum average cost due to which less quantity is produced and higher price is charged. This phenomenon can be better explained by comparing monopoly with perfect competition.

How is a monopoly allocatively inefficient in a competitive market?

A monopoly is allocatively inefficient because in monopoly (at Qm) the price is greater than MC. (P > MC). In a competitive market, the price would be lower and more consumers would benefit from buying the good. A monopoly results in dead-weight welfare loss indicated by the blue triangle.