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An oligopoly (from Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few' and πωλέω (pōléō) 'to sell') is a market in which pricing control lies in the hands of a few sellers. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] As a result of their significant market power, firms in oligopolistic markets can influence prices through manipulating the supply function .
An antitrust barrier to entry is "a cost that delays entry and thereby reduces social welfare relative to immediate but equally costly entry". [1] This contrasts with the concept of economic barrier to entry defined above, as it can delay entry into a market but does not result in any cost-advantage to incumbents in the market.
The critical loss is defined as the maximum sales loss that could be sustained as a result of the price increase without making the price increase unprofitable. Where the likely loss of sales to the hypothetical monopolist (cartel) is less than the Critical Loss, then a 5% price increase would be profitable and the market is defined. [6]
The emergence of oligopoly market forms is mainly attributed to the monopoly of market competition, i.e., the market monopoly acquired by enterprises through their competitive advantages, and the administrative monopoly due to government regulations, such as when the government grants monopoly power to an enterprise in the industry through laws ...
Oligopoly: The number of enterprises is small, entry and exit from the market are restricted, product attributes are different, and the demand curve is downward sloping and relatively inelastic. Oligopolies are usually found in industries in which initial capital requirements are high and existing companies have strong foothold in market share.
Generally, we expect a firm's sales to increase the stronger the total demand for the industry's product as a whole. Conversely, we expect the firm to sell less if there are a significant number of firms in the industry and/or the higher the firm's price in relation to those competitors. The demand equation for such a firm would be:
The oligopoly considers price cuts to be a dangerous strategy. Businesses depend on each other. Under this market structure, the differentiation of products may or may not exist. [9] The product they sell may or may not be differentiated and there are barriers to entry: natural, cost, market size or dissuasive strategies.
Strategic excess capacity may be established to either reduce the viability of entry for potential firms. [5] Excess capacity take place when an incumbent firm threatens to entrants of the possibility to increase their production output and establish an excess of supply, and then reduce the price to a level where the competing cannot contend.