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The Ramsey problem, or Ramsey pricing, or Ramsey–Boiteux pricing, is a second-best policy problem concerning what prices a public monopoly should charge for the various products it sells in order to maximize social welfare (the sum of producer and consumer surplus) while earning enough revenue to cover its fixed costs.
In economics, a government-granted monopoly (also called a "de jure monopoly" or "regulated monopoly") is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of government enforcement.
A government-granted monopoly or legal monopoly, by contrast, is sanctioned by the state, often to provide an incentive to invest in a risky venture or enrich a domestic interest group. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are sometimes used as examples of government-granted monopolies.
Example: Standard Oil (1870–1911)Under monopoly, monopoly firms can obtain excess profits through differential prices. According to the degree of price difference, price discrimination can be divided into three levels. [11] Natural monopoly, a monopoly in which economies of scale cause efficiency to increase continuously with the size of the ...
However, the industry is now less competitive, with a monopoly being the most extreme example. Since the firm is no longer a price taker, the price it charges will be above the (now lower) unit cost. For a monopoly, for example, the price will be set where the unit/marginal cost intersects marginal revenue.
For example, in most countries, regulation controls the sale and consumption of alcohol and prescription drugs, as well as the food business, provision of personal or residential care, public transport, construction, film and TV, etc. Monopolies, especially those that are difficult to abolish (natural monopoly), are often regulated.
Rate-of-return regulation (also cost-based regulation) is a system for setting the prices charged by government-regulated monopolies, such as public utilities. It attempts to set prices at efficient (non-monopolistic, competitive) levels [ 1 ] equal to the efficient costs of production, plus a government-permitted rate of return on capital.
[1] [4] [2] The American firm Alcoa Aluminum is a historical example of a monopoly due to natural resource control; its control of "practically every source of bauxite in the United States" was one key reason that "[it] was, for a long time, the sole producer of aluminum in the United States". [4]