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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 .
Sweezy argued that an ordinary demand curve does not apply to oligopoly markets and promotes a kinked demand curve. From Queen's College in Oxford , Robert Lowe Hall and Charles J. Hitch wrote "Price Theory and Business Behavior," presenting similar ideas but including more rigorous empirical testing, including a business survey of 39 ...
The graph below depicts the kinked demand curve hypothesis which was proposed by Paul Sweezy who was an American economist. [29] It is important to note that this graph is a simplistic example of a kinked demand curve. Kinked Demand Curve. Oligopolistic firms are believed to operate within the confines of the kinked demand function.
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.
Markets that face a downward sloping demand curve are said to have market power. This terms means that the markets have a certain power to decide their own price. [3] This does not mean that the firm can decide the quantity they wish to sell. The firm can decide the price and the quantity is determined by the demand curve.
Cournot's curve of 'demand or sales' Cournot was wary of psychological notions of demand, defining it simply as the amount sold of a particular good (helped along by the fact that the French word débit, meaning 'sales quantity', has the same initial letter as demande, meaning 'demand' [7]). He formalised it mathematically as follows:
In microeconomics, the Bertrand–Edgeworth model of price-setting oligopoly looks at what happens when there is a homogeneous product (i.e. consumers want to buy from the cheapest seller) where there is a limit to the output of firms which are willing and able to sell at a particular price. This differs from the Bertrand competition model ...
Sweezy did pioneering work in the fields of expectations and oligopoly in these years, introducing for the first time the concept of the kinked demand curve in the determination of oligopoly pricing. [3] Harvard published Sweezy's dissertation, Monopoly and Competition in the English Coal Trade, 1550–1850, in 1938.