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Key Words and Phrases

retail stores

  • роздрібні магазини

  • to charge the price

  • встановлювати ціну

  • family - run business

  • сімейний бізнес

  • to discourage

  • відмовляти

  • to lessen

  • зменшувати

  • public utilities

  • комунальні послуги

Exercises on the text:

Ex. 1. Read and translate the text.

Ex. 2. Answer the following questions:

  1. What basic degrees of competition exist in a private enterprise system?

  2. What does pure competition involve?

  3. What is monopolistic competition and what does it give a firm?

  4. What is oligopoly?

  5. What is monopoly?

Ex. 3. Give Ukrainian equivalents for the following words and word combinations:

relative competitiveness; particular industry; to influence the prices; purely competitive market; government price support programs; to persuade smb to choose; huge investment; previously mentioned types; to prohibit attempts to monopolize markets; public utility; substantial control over pricing.

Ex. 4. Complete the following words and word combinations. Explain their meaning to your groupmates.

… of competition; pure …; rel… competitiveness; a purely comp… market; retail …; the primary dif…; comp… products; reg… monopolies.

Ex. 5. Find proper definitions and study them.

Terms

Definitions

1. Pure competition

2. Monopolistic competition

3. Oligopoly

4. Monopoly

a) a market situation where firms are able to differentiate their product from those of competitors

b) a market in which there are few sellers

c) there are many firms in an industry and they are close enough in size

d) a market situation in which there are no competitors

Unit 19 Monopoly and Competition

A holder of a monopoly is a single seller who has exclusive control of the supply and marketing of some product or service. This exclusivity frequently enables the monopolist to set a selling price that is likely to be higher than it would be if competition with other sellers of the same product existed. A telephone company serving a community is an example of a monopolist. In the United States, however, because every telephone company is treated as a PUBLIC UTILITY, the prices it charges are fixed by state and federal regulatory agencies. Copyrights and patents are forms of monopolies granted by the government.

Competition and Market Power

Economists have coined the term perfect competition to describe the situation in which so many sellers compete that no one of them can influence the selling price. Few examples exist of perfect competition as defined by economists. Wheat farmers perhaps come closest to it. Such sellers are sometimes referred to as "price takers" rather than "price makers", and they theoretically have free entry and exit from markets, are independent, and have a homogeneous product to sell.

Market power is the term economists use to describe the ability to hold control over prices and profits. A monopoly has the greatest market power, and the seller under perfect competition has no market power at all. In the United States most businesses operate in industries falling between the polar extremes of monopoly and perfect competition. To explain the behaviour of firms in the broad spectrum of markets between these extremes, economists have developed theories about the differences in market power in various industries.

The most widely held theory assumes that the extent of a firm's market power depends on certain characteristics existing in the market where it operates. Three characteristics are believed to be especially important: (1) the share of an industry's sales held by its leading firms; (2) the ease with which new firms can enter an industry; and (3) the extent to which the products of a seller are differentiated from those of other sellers of similar products. According to this theory, originating in the works of the American economists Edward H. Chamberlin and Joe S. Bain, a firm's power will be greatest if it shares an industry with few competitors, if it is shielded almost completely from the threat of entry by new competitors, and if it sells a highly differentiated products that is distinct from all similar products. When a "big three" or "big four" dominates an industry, that situation is called a shared monopoly, because such firms are believed to behave almost like a single-firm monopoly. If these firms act together to control the supply and marketing of goods, they are known as an oligopoly or cartel.

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