If it charges a higher price than the market price, the consumers would go to the other suppliers, and the firm would lose all demand. As shown in Figure 1, the firm faces a flat demand curve at the market price Pm. In a perfectly competitive market, since there are many firms competing for consumer demand, any one firm is just a price-taker. The biggest difference between a monopolist and a firm in a perfectly competitive market is the firm's ability to influence the price. What is the demand curve for a monopoly? Let's start from the very beginning! We have quite a few exciting graphs to show what's going on with a monopoly, so let's get started! Demand curve for monopoly Think about it, it would be very expensive and not make much sense for another company to come in and build an entire electric grid again to compete with the existing electricity network grid provider. Utility companies are common examples of natural monopolies. This means that there is a high fixed cost involved. A monopoly can also happen "naturally" when the fixed cost is simply too high for another company to enter the market.Ī natural monopoly occurs when long-run economies of scale exist for only one firm to serve the entire market. Think about Microsoft having a monopoly on the Windows operating system, or a drug company having a monopoly on patented drugs. Another common reason for a monopoly is intellectual property protection. In some cases, the government can decide to only allow one firm (usually a state-owned company) to operate in a market. Eventually, De Beers lost its monopoly power over the diamond market. Many of these new mines decided to sell diamonds directly to the market without going through De Beers. However, new diamond mines were eventually discovered in Russia, Australia, and Canada. When demand for diamonds was weak, De Beers would stockpile diamonds to limit supplies and stabilize the price when demand was strong, the company would release that stockpile to the market (if the price becomes too high, people would turn away from buying diamonds). This level of market power meant that the company could effectively control the price of diamonds on the international market. At its peak, De Beers once controlled almost 90% of the diamond market share. De Beers not only owned a lot of diamond mines, but also got other suppliers of diamonds to sell them exclusively via De Beers. One firm, De Beers, once controlled much of the global diamond market. The diamond market was often cited as an example of a monopoly.
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