Monopoly - Definition of a Monopoly and How Monopolies Affect the US Economy

Monopoly - Definition of a Monopoly and How Monopolies Affect the US Economy:

'via Blog this'Definition: A monopoly is when a business, usually a large corporation, is the only provider of a good or service. Monopolies are usually bad for an economy because they restrict free trade, which allows the market itself to set prices.

Why Are Monopolies Bad?

Since monopolies are the only provider, they can set pretty much any price they choose. This is known as price-fixing. They can pretty much do this, regardless of demand, because they know the consumer has no choice. This is especially true for goods and services where there is inelastic demand, where people don't have a lot of flexibility. An example of this is gasoline. There are choices, such as mass transit or bicycles, but they aren't an easy substitute in many areas.

Not only can monopolies raise prices, they can also supply inferior products. This has happened in some urban areas, where grocery stores know that the poor urban dweller has fewer alternatives.

Monopolies are also bad for an economy because the manufacturer has no incentive to innovate, and provide "new and improved" products. This used to be true of cable companies. It was expensive to lay new cable, so residents had to accept the cable company's service and prices. However, disruptive technology is the worst enemy of monopolies. Dish TV, iPads, and Netflix has created a new type of entertainment service that doesn't rely on cable to deliver movies and TV programming. The same thing happened with land-line telephones.

Another reasons monopolies are bad is that they can create inflation. Since they can set any price they want, they will raise costs to consumers. This is known as cost-push inflation. A good example of how this works is OPEC, or the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The twelve oil exporting countries in OPEC now control the price of 46% of the oil produced in the world. However, this is not a true monopoly, but more of a cartel. First, most of the oil is produced by one country, Saudi Arabia. It has a far greater ability to affect the price by itself by raising or lowering output. Second, the price set by OPEC must be agreed to by all its members. Even if they agree to it, some may try to undercut the price to gain a little extra market share. It is difficult to enforce the OPEC price. However, the countrys within OPEC still make more per barrel of oil than they did before OPEC.

Are Monopolies Ever Good?

Sometimes a monopoly is necessary to ensure consistent delivery of a product or service that has a very high up-front cost. This is true, for example, with electric and water utilities. Since it is so expensive to build new electric plants or dams, it made economic sense to allow a monopoly for a particular area. To protect the consumer, these industries were regulated by the federal and local government. The companies were allowed to set prices to recoup their costs and a reasonable profit. In the 1990s, there was much talk of deregulation to allow competition, and in some cases this in fact occurred.

Monopolies in the U.S.

Monopolies in the U.S. aren't actually illegal. However, they cannot use their monopoly power to gain price or other advantages thanks to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It was called Anti-Trust because that was the form that monopolies held in 1890, when it was enacted. A group of companies formed a trust to fix prices low enough to drive competitors out of business. Once they had a monopoly on the market, these trusts would raise prices to regain their profit.

The most famous trust was Standard Oil Company. John D. Rockefeller owned all the oil refineries, which were in Ohio, in the 1890s. His monopoly allowed him to control the price of oil, and to bully the railroad companies to charge him a lower price for transportation. When Ohio threatened legal action to put him out of business, he simply moved to New Jersey. He also set up the first trust, by owning the majority share of former competitors stock certificates of trust.(Source: American.gov archive, The Sherman Anti-Trust Act)

In 1998, the U.S. District Court ruled that Microsoft was an illegal monopoly. It used its controlling position as the operating system for personal computers to intimidate chip-maker Intel and computer makers IBM and Apple Windows to withhold superior technology. Microsoft was ordered to share information about its operating system so competitors could develop innovative products using the Windows platform. It was ordered to cease discriminatory pricing and product access policies, and to share basic information about its Windows PC operating system needed for rivals to compete more effectively and freely with Microsoft in the market for applications software on the Windows platform. Furthermore, disruptive technologies have done more to erode Microsoft's monopoly than government action. People are switching to mobile devices, such as tablets,iPods and smart phones. Microsoft does not have its operating system on these devices. (Source: Seattle Times, Long Microsoft Anti-Trust Case Is Over, May 11, 2011)

Many consider Google to have a monopoly on the Internet search market. People use Google to find 65% of all searches. Its closest competitors, Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo, only make up 34%, combined. It also controls 80% of all search-related advertising. Furthermore, Google has developed the Android operating system for smart phones. (Source: Businessweek, A Google Monopoly Isn't the Point, September 23, 2011)