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Two different types of cost are important in microeconomics: marginal cost and fixed cost.The marginal cost is the cost to the company of serving one more customer. In an industry where a natural monopoly does not exist, the vast majority of industries, the marginal cost decreases with economies of scale, then increases as the company has growing pains (overworking its employees, bureaucracy ...
Often, a natural monopoly is the outcome of an initial rivalry between several competitors. An early market entrant that takes advantage of the cost structure and can expand rapidly can exclude smaller companies from entering and can drive or buy out other companies. A natural monopoly suffers from the same inefficiencies as any other monopoly.
In a monopoly market, the consumer is faced with a single brand, making information gathering relatively inexpensive. In a perfectly competitive industry, the consumer is faced with many brands, but because the brands are virtually identical information gathering is also relatively inexpensive.
A firm is a natural monopoly if it is able to serve the entire market demand at a lower cost than any combination of two or more smaller, more specialized firms. Or natural obstacles, such as the sole ownership of natural resources, De beers was a monopoly in the diamond industry for years. Monopsony, when there is only a single buyer in a ...
The monopoly ensures a monopoly price exists when it establishes the quantity of the product. [1] As the sole supplier of the product within the market, its sales establish the entire industry's supply within the market, and the monopoly's production and sales decisions can establish a single price for the industry without any influence from ...
A monopoly produces where its average cost curve meets the market demand curve under average cost pricing, referred to as the average cost pricing equilibrium. Minimum efficient scale: Marginal or average costs may be nonlinear, or have discontinuities. Average cost curves may therefore only be shown over a limited scale of production for a ...
Without barriers to entry and collusion in a market, the existence of a monopoly and monopoly profit cannot persist in the long run. [1] [3] Normally, when economic profit exists within an industry, economic agents form new firms in the industry to obtain at least a portion of the existing economic profit.
A natural monopoly occurs when a single company dominates the market by having the lowest prices or the products most in demand by consumers. Fixed costs and variable costs can both be factors. If the fixed costs associated with providing a service or product are very high, it may not make economic sense for new competitors to enter the market.