...Oligopoly in business can be described as when few firms between them share a large proportion of the industry. In the essay I will examine the economics literature on tacit collusion in oligopoly and why firms are tempted to collude. I will provide benefit of collusion and legal literature regarding collusion. Some of the best know companies are oligopolists, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, British Airways, and Virgin Atlantic Airways. There are however, significant difference in the structure of industries under oligopoly, and similar significant difference in the behaviour of firms. The firms may also produce a virtually identical product. Most oligopolists produce differentiated products such as (e.g. cars, drinks). Much of the competition between such oligopolists is in term of the marketing of their particular brands (Sloman, Hinde, Garratt: 2010). Despite the difference between oligopolies, there are two crucial features that distinguish oligopoly from other market structures. There are various barriers to the entry of new firms because it requires a lot of capital to start, however entry barriers vary from industry to industry. Also, because there are only few firms under oligopoly, each firm will have to take into account of the others; this means that they are mutually dependent. Oligopolies do not compete on prices. Price wars tend to lead to lower profits, leaving a little change to market shares. Furthermore, Oligopolies firms tend to charge reasonably premium prices...
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...competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly. Each of these market structures faces the common factor of competition. Various degrees of competition are what separate these market structures. Secondly, the commodity or product plays a huge role in these market structures because some products have substitutes or identical products. Lastly, we will observe the barriers to which a firms face when entering or exiting the market. This is a very important factor in the market structures because relative difficulty in entry and exit of the markets will determine what type of market structure we are examining. Market structures are based on two extremes known as perfect competition and monopoly. Oligopolies lie in the middle of this spectrum. A comparison and contrast of each market structure in short term and long term scenarios will be detailed in the following paper. Perfect competition and Monopoly In a Perfect competition there are four conditions that characterize the perfect competition structure: a large number of buyers & sellers, free entry & exit, product homogeneity, and perfect information. Each of these aspects is compared when examining the differences between monopoly and perfect competition. First in perfect competition there are a large number of small firms. Perfectly competitive firms’ demand curves are perfectly elastic while a monopoly’s demand curve is negative sloping, which is why these small firms are price takers and have no market...
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...is simply the area of the shaded rectangle. An oligopoly is a market dominated by a few producers. The market can be international, national, or local. The main characteristic of an oligopoly is that they have pricing power. However, unlike a monopoly that consists of a single firm dominating the market, an oligopolistic firm must take into consideration how the other producers will react to any changes in price. It is this mutual interdependence of the few firms producing the product that make an oligopoly different from a monopoly. Sometimes, an oligopoly will try to increase its market power by forming a cartel, which is a group of firms acting in unison. An oligopolistic firm is generally a large firm that had to invest a lot of capital to produce the product, such as aircraft, cars, and household appliances. This large initial investment of capital is often a major barrier to entry to oligopolistic markets. Other barriers to entry include patents, control of strategic resources, and the ability to engage in retaliatory pricing to prevent firms from entering the market. An oligopoly produces products that exhibit large economies of scale, where the cost of producing each unit declines with large quantities. Such economies of scale prevent other firms from entering the market, since there would be little market share that could be gained, and what could be gained would not be enough to be profitable. An oligopoly can produce either...
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...Competition within the UK Food Retail Industry Abstract This dissertation set out to explore the nature of competition within the UK Food Retail Industry as well as to evaluate the competitive strategies undertaken by firms in the market. This task has been undertaken through a critical analysis of a range of literature focussed on establishing the current state of play in the UK supermarket industry, examining general theory on competition and competitive strategy, as well as a review of literature that specifically addresses competition between supermarkets in the UK. Looking first at the nature of competition in the UK food retail industry, it was clear from the literature review that while the industry has many characteristics of an oligopoly as it is dominated by a small number of major firms, it is undoubtedly highly competitive. The evaluation of the competitive strategies undertaken by firms in the industry showed that between the leading firms in the market that Tesco had the best balance between price and customer perceived value but there was clear evidence to suggest that the other leading firms were positioning themselves around Tesco in order to reduce its apparent competitive advantages. While the analysis showed similar competitive strategies for the big four, it revealed different strategies being adopted by other firms in the industry who look to operate in niche markets within the food retail industry, such as Lidl and Aldi, who compete almost entirely on price...
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...Antitrust law is the law of competition, and it is perhaps the least understood law of all. This article provides an overview and explanation of the essential principals of antitrust law, along with comments on certain recurring themes and recent developments in the voluminous case law by which the courts have struggled to give meaning and practical effect to the principal antitrust statutes. What Is Antitrust Law? Broadly speaking, antitrust laws seek to promote fair competition on the merits and to protect consumers and wronged competitor businesses from anti-competitive business practices — practices undertaken in effort to undermine competitive commercial behavior in a given market or line of commerce. The antitrust laws therefore forbid the wrongful acquisition or preservation of monopoly power, the abuse of monopoly power in order to establish a new monopoly, and concerted restraints of trade (i.e., business practices undertaken by two or more firms that improperly stifle or suppress “competition on the merits” in a given market). They also govern proposed mergers and acquisitions that are sufficiently large to constitute a threat to competition, and they address commercial practices that pose an arguable danger to competition on the merits in a properly defined antitrust market. The Principal Antitrust Offenses. Antitrust law is the law of competition. It is concerned with wrongs committed against competition on the merits in a given line of commerce or market. It is...
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...CHAPTER 1 | Economics: Foundations and Models Chapter Summary and Learning Objectives 1.1 Three Key Economic Ideas (pages 4–8) Explain these three key economic ideas: People are rational; people respond to economic incentives; and optimal decisions are made at the margin. Economics is the study of the choices consumers, business managers, and government officials make to attain their goals, given their scarce resources. We must make choices because of scarcity, which means that although our wants are unlimited, the resources available to fulfill those wants are limited. Economists assume that people are rational in the sense that consumers and firms use all available information as they take actions intended to achieve their goals. Rational individuals weigh the benefits and costs of each action and choose an action only if the benefits outweigh the costs. Although people act from a variety of motives, ample evidence indicates that they respond to economic incentives. Economists use the word marginal to mean extra or additional. The optimal decision is to continue any activity up to the point where the marginal benefit equals the marginal cost. 1.2 The Economic Problem That Every Society Must Solve (pages 8–11) Discuss how an economy answers these questions: What goods and services will be produced? How will the goods and services be produced? Who will receive the goods and services produced? Society faces trade-offs: Producing more of one good...
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...“This document is attributed to Donald N. Stengel” Attributed to Donald N. Stengal Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books/ Saylor.org 1 Chapter 1 Introduction to Managerial Economics What Is Managerial Economics? One standard definition for economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. A second definition is the study of choice related to the allocation of scarce resources. The first definition indicates that economics includes any business, nonprofit organization, or administrative unit. The second definition establishes that economics is at the core of what managers of these organizations do. This book presents economic concepts and principles from the perspective of “managerial economics,” which is a subfield of economics that places special emphasis on the choice aspect in the second definition. The purpose of managerial economics is to provide economic terminology and reasoning for the improvement of managerial decisions. Most readers will be familiar with two different conceptual approaches to the study of economics: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics studies phenomena related to goods and services from the perspective of individual decisionmaking entities—that is, households and businesses. Macroeconomics approaches the same phenomena at an aggregate level, for...
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...decisions. It must decide which members of the household do which tasks and what each member gets in return: Who cooks dinner? Who does the laundry? Who gets the extra dessert at dinner? Who gets to choose what TV show to watch? In short, the household must allocate its scarce resources among its various members, taking into account each member’s abilities, efforts, and desires. Like a household, a society faces many decisions. A society must decide what jobs will be done and who will do them. It needs some people to grow food, other people to make clothing, and still others to design computer software. Once society has allocated people (as well as land, buildings, and machines) to various jobs, 3 Consider why trade among people or nations can be good for everyone Discuss why markets are a good, but not per fect, way to allocate resources Learn what determines some trends in the overall economy 1 TLFeBOOK 2 4 Ten Principles of Economics PA R T O N E INTRODUCTION scarcity the limited nature of society’s resources economics the study of how society manages its scarce resources it must also allocate the output of goods and services that they produce. It must decide who will eat caviar and who will eat potatoes. It must decide who will drive a Porsche and who will take the bus. The management of...
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...Chapter 1 The Evolution of the Modern Firm Chapter Contents 1) Introduction 2) The World in 1840 • Doing Business in 1840 • Conditions of Business in 1840: Life Without a Modern Infrastructure Example 1.1: The Emergence of Chicago 3) The World in 1910 • Doing Business in 1910 Example 1.2: Responding to the Business Environment: The Case of American Whaling • Business Conditions in 1910: A "Modern" Infrastructure Example 1.3: Evolution of the Steel Industry 4) The World Today • Doing Business Today • The Infrastructure Today Example 1.4: Economic Gyrations and Traffic Gridlock in Thailand 5) Three Different Worlds: Consistent Principles, Changing Conditions, and Adaptive Strategies Example 1.5: Infrastructure and Emerging Markets: The Russian Privatization Program Example 1.6: Building National Infrastructure: The Transcontinental Railroad 6) Chapter Summary 7) Questions Chapter Summary This chapter analyses the business environment in three different time periods: 1840, 1910 and the present. It looks at the business infrastructure, market conditions, the size and scope of a firm’s activities and a firm’s response to changes. This historical perspective shows that all successful businesses have used similar principles to adapt to widely varying business conditions in order to succeed. Businesses in the period before 1840 were small and operated in localized markets...
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...MIcroeconomics: Markets, Methods & Models Douglas Curtis and Ian Irvine | Version 2014/2015 $ ADAPTED OPEN TEXT FORMATIVE ONLINE ASSESSMENT COURSE SUPPLEMENTS COURSE LOGISTICS & SUPPORT a d v a n c i n g l e a r n i n g www.lyryx.com Copyright This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en_GB Douglas Curtis and Ian Irvine Edition 1.11 This edition is differentiated from the first edition solely by minor editorial adjustments. Content has not been altered. Microeconomics: Markets, Methods and Models About the Authors Doug Curtis is a specialist in macroeconomics. He is the author of twenty research papers on fiscal policy, monetary policy, and economic growth and structural change. He has also prepared research reports for Canadian industry and government agencies and authored numerous working papers. He completed his PhD at McGill University, and has held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge and the University of York in the United Kingdom. His current research interests are monetary and fiscal policy rules, and the relationship between economic growth and structural change. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and Sessional Adjunct Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario Ian Irvine is a specialist in microeconomics, public economics, economic inequality...
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...Contemporary Developments in Business and Management Kenneth Fee The University of Sunderland © 2013 The University of Sunderland First published September 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without permission of the copyright owner. While every effort has been made to ensure that references to websites are correct at time of going to press, the world wide web is a constantly changing environment and the University of Sunderland cannot accept any responsibility for any changes to addresses. The University of Sunderland acknowledges product, service and company names referred to in this publication, many of which are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks. All materials internally quality assessed by the University of Sunderland and reviewed by academics external to the University. Instructional design and publishing project management by Wordhouse Ltd, Reading, UK. Contents Introduction vii Unit 1 The contemporary world of business and management Introduction 1.1 1.2 The global business environment The importance of developments in the global environment Case Study 1.3 Organisational decision making and performance vii 1 3 10 14 17 19 19 20 Self-assessment questions Feedback on self-assessment questions Summary Unit 2 Globalisation Introduction 2...
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...things for their own consumption. For example, people could grow vegetables in their garden or allotment; they could do their own painting and decorating. Alternatively people could engage in barter: they could produce things and then swap them for goods that other people had produced. ( Before reading on, how would you define scarcity? Must goods be at least temporarily unattainable to be scarce? See page 2 of text for a definition of scarcity. Goods need not be unattainable to be scarce. Because people’s incomes are limited, they cannot have everything they want from shops, even though the shops are stocked full. If all items in shops were free, the shelves would soon be emptied! ( If we would all like more money, why does the government not print a lot more? Could it not thereby solve the problem of scarcity ‘at a stroke’? The problem of scarcity is one of a lack of production. Simply printing more money without producing more goods and services will merely lead to inflation. To the extent that firms cannot meet the extra demand (i.e. the extra consumer expenditure) by extra production, they will respond by putting up their prices. Without extra production, consumers will end up unable to buy any more than previously. 5 ( (Box 1.1) What is it that makes each one of the above news items an economics item? Each one of the items has something to do with production, consumption or exchange, and/or the money incomes and expenditures...
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...HAL R. VARIAN 1 NORTON To my parents Copyright @ 1992, 1984, 1978 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America THIRD EDITION Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data f Varian, Hal R. Mlcroeconon~lc analysis / Hal R. Varian. -- 3rd ed. p. an Includes blbllographlcal references and index. 1. Mlcroeconomlcs. 1. Title. HB172.V35 1992 338.5--dc20 ISBN 0-393-95735-7 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WClA 1PU CONTENTS PREFACE 1 Technology Measurement of inputs and outputs 1 Specification of technology 2 Example: Input requzrement set Example: Isoquant Example: Shortrun productzon posszbzlztzes set Example: Pt-oductzon functzon Example: Transformatzon functzon Example: Cobb-Douglas technology Example: Leontzef technology Activity analysis 5 Monotonic technologies 6 Convex technologies 7 Regular technologies 9 Parametric representations of technology 10 The technical rate of substitution 11 Example: T R S for a Cobb-Douglas technology The elasticity of substitution 13 Example: The elastzczty of substztutzon for the Cobb-Douglas productzon functzon Returns to scale 14 Example: Returns to scale and the Cobb-Douglas technology Homogeneous and homothetic technologies 17 Example: The CES productzon functzon Exercises 21 2 Profit Maximization . Profit maximization 25 Difficulties 28 Example:...
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...MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS Suggested Practice Problems • All multiple choice problems in Chapters 21, 22, and 23 • Individual problems: 21.2, 21.3, 22.5, 23.3, 23.5 • Answers (Click Here) Complete Final Exam. The exam must be completed by Sunday at 11:59 p.m. ET. Exam covers Weeks 5, 6, 7, and 8. Chapter 21 – Getting Employees to Work in the Firm’s Best Interests Chapter 22 – Getting Divisions to Work in the Firm’s Best Interests Chapter 23 – Managing Vertical Relationships Managerial Economics, 3rd Edition Luke M. Froeb; Brian T. McCann; Michael R. Ward; Mikhael Shor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_economics / http://www.coursehero.com/sitemap/schools/501-FIT/courses/1467122-ECONBUS-5421/ http://www.coursehero.com/sitemap/states/Massachusetts/ Managerial economics is the "application of the economic concepts and economic analysis to the problems of formulating rational managerial decisions".[1]It is sometimes referred to as business economics and is a branch of economics that applies microeconomic analysis to decision methods of businesses or other management units. As such, it bridges economic theory and economics in practice.[2] It draws heavily from quantitative techniques such as regression analysis, correlation and calculus.[3] If there is a unifying theme that runs through most of managerial economics, it is the attempt to optimize business decisions given the firm's objectives and given constraints imposed by...
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...paper and is a vital tool if you are taking the computer based exam. Note FIA FAB and ACCA Paper F1 are examined under the same syllabus and study guide. FOR EXAMS FROM FEBRUARY 2013 TO JANUARY 2014 FAB/F1 ACCOUNTANT IN BUSINESS First edition May 2011 Second edition November 2012 ISBN 9781 4453 9976 8 (Previous ISBN 9781 4453 7311 9) e-ISBN 9781 4453 9252 3 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Published by BPP Learning Media Ltd BPP House, Aldine Place London W12 8AA www.bpp.com/learningmedia Printed in the United Kingdom by Ricoh Ricoh House Ullswater Crescent Coulsdon CR5 2HR A note about copyright Dear Customer What does the little © mean and why does it matter? Your market-leading BPP books, course materials and elearning materials do not write and update themselves. People write them: on their own behalf or as employees of an organisation that invests in this activity. Copyright law protects their livelihoods. It does so by creating rights over the use of the content. Breach of copyright is a form of theft – as well being a criminal offence in some jurisdictions, it is potentially a serious breach of professional ethics. With current technology, things might seem a bit hazy but,...
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