Market form
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In economics, the main criteria by which one can distinguish between different market forms are: the number and size of producers and consumers in the market, the type of goods and services being traded, and the degree to which information can flow freely. The major market forms are:
- Perfect competition, in which the market consists of a very large number of firms producing product in the same domain.
- Monopolistic competition, where there are a large number of somewhat independent firms
- Oligopoly, in which a market is dominated by a small number of sellers
- Oligopsony, a market dominated by many sellers and a few buyers
- Monopoly, where there is only one provider of a product or service
- Natural monopoly, a monopoly in which economies of scale cause efficiency to increase continuously with the size of the firm
- Monopsony, when there is only one buyer in a market
These somewhat abstract concerns tend to determine some but not all details of a specific concrete market system where buyers and sellers actually meet and commit to trade.
| Market Structure | Seller Entry Barriers | Seller Number | Buyer Entry Barriers | Buyer Number |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perfect Competition | No | Many | No | Many |
| Monopolistic competition | No | Many | No | Many |
| Oligopoly | Yes | Few | No | Many |
| Oligopsony | No | Many | Yes | Few |
| Monopoly | Yes | One | No | Many |
| Monopsony | No | Many | Yes | One |
See also
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Topics in microeconomics | Edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:Microeconomics-footer&action=edit) |
| Scarcity | Opportunity cost | Supply and demand | Elasticity | Economic surplus | Aggregation of individual demand to total, or market, demand | Consumer theory | Production, costs, and pricing | Market form | Welfare economics | Market failure |
| List of Marketing Topics | List of Management Topics |
| List of Economics Topics | List of Accounting Topics |
| List of Finance Topics | List of Economists |