Market Structure (The Video Series) - Monopoly

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my fifth market structure video in the series. Today I am covering monopoly.

This video series is intended to supplement my written posts on market structures. Video offers an alternative way of viewing my content. Most of what is presented in the video is similar to the written posts; though some areas are given slightly more emphasis while other areas are given slightly less emphasis. So even if you have read the posts, the videos offer something a little different and hopefully brings the subject matter to life.

Quick Summary of the main points in the video

This video investigates and explains the monopoly market structure. The monopoly market structure has several real life examples. For most countries, monopolies are predominantly owned by Government. These monopoles often include water, electricity, transport, military, health, and education.

There are some private monopolies. Microsoft was close to being considered a monopoly back in the 1990s. Private monopolies can occur when Government monopolies are privatised. Normally, privatisation creates an oligopoly market structure by facilitating competition rather than creating a private monopoly.

Monopoly has the following characteristics:

Just one seller
Strong barriers to entry
The firm has complete control over price or quantity unless regulated
Supernormal profits in both the short-run and long-run
Allocative efficient price and quantity is not achieved unless regulated
Majority of monopolies are owned by Government
Monopolies are notoriously inefficient because of size (diseconomies of scale) and lack of competition

I hope you enjoyed the video. I still have monopsony and oligopsony videos to come.

All of my written market structure posts can be accessed using the following links.

Introduction to market structure written post can be accessed using the following link.