Talk:Oligopoly/Archive 1

Credits
I believe the late Paul Sweezy is the originator of the kinked demand curve, and as I recall from my college economics 25 years ago his name was almost synonymous with it at one time. Therefore whether one agrees with his socialism or not (and I personally do not), my sense is that, at the very least, his name deserves some mention here as he is te originator of the theory. If I am wrong, I welcome your comments. --Gunnermanz 12:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

In the United States section, why is the oil industry not mentioned? That seems like the most obvious example... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonyknouf (talk • contribs) 06:00, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Kinked-Demand Curve Model
This type of model is common for the analysis of ologoply, but it is just one of many possible models (others are hinted at later in the article). I would recommend mentioning that this is one common model of several that can be used to analyze these types of markets, so that the reader does not believe it to be the only model.

--Mjhannan 01:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)mjhannan

Monopolisitic Competition example?
Monopolistic Competition is listed at the end of the article as an example of oligopoly, which it is not. While game theory may be used to analyze monopolisitically competitive industries, I think that it confuses the distinction between these types of market structures to include it as an example.

--Mjhannan 01:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)mjhannan

Oligopoly: A form of economy?
"An oligopoly is a form of economy"

I don't agree with this statement, An oligopoly is a form of Market structure, not a form of economy...

I've correct this definition.

JKleo 08:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I was the one who posted the material I "blanke" I had posted it by accident.--Gary123 02:10, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Sweezy's oligopoly ? I erased that.

Spelling or three terms?

 * "A" market with a ""few sellers"" (oligopoly) and a "few buyers" (oligopsony) 'is' referred to as a bilateral ologopoly."'''"

Are there two words here, olIgopoly and olOgopoly? Also, the second paragraph sounds a little szchizophrenic: can it be massaged a bit. Some examples would be helpful. MShonle 08:41, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

the whole article is very impressing actually

plurioligopoly? monoligopoly?
Pluriologopoly and monoligopoly are booger terms. Lets see: mono=one=oligos=one=few=firms? Pluri=more=oligos=few=Plurioligopoly=more than one=few firms=? this page with booger terms!!!!


 * Ah, but what about polypoly? ;) Spamsara 20:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriate Statement by 84.92.44.123
I have reverted edits made by 84.92.44.123 to previous versoin statement added --Julien Deveraux 03:46, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Historical examples?
The Monopoly article has a section of historical examples. It would be nice to do the same for this article, naming historical, or current examples of market situations that could be seen as oligopolistic. Some examples could include the aircraft industry, the oil industry or beverage brands such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola. What do you think?

Monopoly
Monopoly isn't an oligopoly model. I've removed that from the article. 128.100.247.59 (talk) 21:26, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Oligopoly in US Media Industries
In order to provide more specific examples of oligopoly in the United States, I added a description of oligopolies in US media industries. I included statistics about media ownership in American film, music, book publishing, and television industries. Inbal36 (talk) 20:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Macquarie English Dictionary
I'm not comfortable with the reference to Macquarie Dictionary for the definition of oligopoly. It should be possible to find a source which is better available and/or an economics or government regulatory source, rather than a dictionary of general English. C RETOG 8(t/c) 20:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Food Industry and Banking Examples
Im under the impression that certain, if not most of the food industry and banking are under control of oligopolistic practices.

Food industries might include Tyson Foods, Sara Lee, Kraft, et. al.

In the United States, the "big four" banks hold 39% of all U.S. customer deposits (as of 2009), and consist of:[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

* Bank of America * Citigroup * JPMorgan Chase * Wells Fargo

taken from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_%28banks%29#United_States —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gizziiusa (talk • contribs) 02:58, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

4 companies... 5 are listed?
"This measure expresses the market share of the four largest firms in an industry as a percentage. For example, as of fourth quarter 2008, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, and T-Mobile together control 89% of the US cellular phone market."

I could be wrong but this seems like 5 companies? Verizon, AT+T, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile = 5, not 5. Bad example? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.149.97 (talk) 15:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Additions
A distinction needs to be made between interaction models (Cournot, Stackelberg, game theory, etc), and theories for why oligopolies form and persist.

Government intervention should be discussed in regards to the Aerospace, Transportation, Energy, Banking, and Agricultural sectors, where industry concentration is the highest, and government allocation and regulation play a significant role in shaping the marketplace.

Limit pricing achieved through collusion should be discussed in regards to the persistence of oligopolies.

Examples of implicit/explicit collusion should be given. Implicit collusion could include Trade associations, patent pools, FDA approval process, to name a few. Widely reported examples of explicit collusion include Cargill/ADM/et al. and Visa/MC/Diners.

Pharmacopia 19:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought the article said "oligopony" but I was sorely disappointed. 128.146.129.106 (talk) 01:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)mlpfan4life

Electricity
Due to government regulations, there are also mounds of red tape preventing competition in the energy sector. They differ by region, but it is also a method of reducing competition to a select few producers of a certain good. It requires additional research, and I welcome any willing participants to assist.

Twillisjr (talk) 21:02, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Re distribution in the "energy sector" (not necessarily relevant to energy sources): Electricity distribution and delivery is a natural monopoly in an essential public service that, traditionally, was viewed as properly run only when done as a regulated public utility (a view with which I agree). That is, government ownership, and regulation by a representative government, was viewed as the only way to insure that the monopoly position would not result in degenerate inefficiencies and exploitation of the public for this essential service. The transfer of these publicly regulated monopolies to private operators did not change their natural monopoly stature, but transparency into them, with reduced oversight, control and regulation, was obscured. With that protection lost, demands of executive salaries, semi-public-employee unions, and inefficiencies are merely passed along to the utility customer with typical regulators being political appointees and mostly rubber stamps for rate adjustments. 76.88.1.215 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:40, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Examples Listed
Adding a note here in regards to my changes to the examples list. In terms of market share I'll usually be going by the description where if four companies control more than 60% of the market, then it is considered a good example of an oligopoly. I will try to add a source for everything in the list, although if this is not possible I will mark it with a citation notice. JONJONAUG (talk) 20:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The Airline industry in the United States is a good example of an oligopoly, it has a few firms controlling most of the industry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.140.94.182 (talk) 06:45, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Dr. Georgantzis's comment on this article
Dr. Georgantzis has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The sentences "Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion which reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers. Oligopoly has its own market structure.[1]" contain several inaccuracies. First of all, oligopoly (say n=3) IS a market structure description. Thus, the second sentence ("...has its own market structure") makes no sense. Second, the ...causality implied by the first sentence is even more problematic. Collusion is a type of behaviour which is usually (as also recognized later in the article) the result, rather than the cause of oligopoly, which is in principle simply defined by the small number of sellers in a market.

Also the editing of equations is not of a professional quality.

Regarding the exposition of the Cournot model, I would prefer to provide the more general formulation (I am happy with the use of the linear specification adopted here) until the final solution stage before using the specific values of the cost and demand parameters adopted here.

Finally, a graphical representation of the reaction functions whose intersection gives the Nash equilibrium solution would be helpful for exposition and reference by less familiar readers."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Georgantzis has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Ivan Barreda-Tarrazona & Nikolaos Georgantzis & Constantine Manasakis & Evangelos Mitrokostas & Emmanuel Petrakis, 2012. "Managerial compensation contracts in quantity-setting duopoly," Working Papers 2012/17, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellon (Spain).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 21:45, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Dr. von Graevenitz's comment on this article
Dr. von Graevenitz has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"1. Overall the entire article seems heavily influenced by the idea that oligopoly and collusion are closely linked. While collusive behaviour is most likely to arise in an oligopolistic setting, that doesn't mean it has to.

2. An oligopoly (from Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning "few", and πωλεῖν (polein), meaning "to sell") is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion which reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers. Oligopoly has its own market structure.

Comment: The penultimate sentence in this paragraph is quite subtle - the word "can" really matters here. Oligopoly often results from investments in R&D or marketing that create what are called "endogenous barriers to entry". Reference: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/sutton/market_structure_theory_evidence.pdf

You might want to create a link to "collusion" which should really have its own entry on wikipedia.

3. Oligopoly is a common market form where a number of firms are in competition. As a quantitative description of oligopoly, the four-firm concentration ratio is often utilized. Comment: Really you should write "as a quantitative description of the degree of competition in oligopoly, the four-firm concentration ratio is often used.

4. the welfare analysis of oligopolies is sensitive to the parameter values used to define the market's structure. In particular, the level of dead weight loss is hard to measure. The study of product differentiation indicates that oligopolies might also create excessive levels of differentiation in order to stifle competition.

Comment: This whole section should be dropped or rewritten. It is full of misconceptions and is poorly linked to what goes before.

4."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. von Graevenitz has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Georg von Graevenitz, 2005. "Integrating Competition Policy and Innovation Policy: The Case of R&D Cooperation," Industrial Organization 0503006, EconWPA.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 13:34, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Schmutzler's comment on this article
Dr. Schmutzler has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"1. "Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion which reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers. Oligopoly has its own market structure."

Comment: strange Statements, delete!

2. "Oligopoly is a common market form where a number of firms are in competition."

Comment: Change to "Oligopoly is a common market form where a small number of firms compete".

3. "An oligopoly maximizes profits." Comment: Misleading, sounds like the oligopoly maximzes industry profits, which is wrong. I am not sure what this sentence means.

4. "this is known as game theory": replace by: "To investigate such situations, the tools of game theory are useful."

5. "Oligopolies become "mature" when they realise they can profit maximise through joint profit maximising" -- unclear Statement

6. "The model assumes that there are two “equally positioned firms”. Better: "The most Basic Version of the model assumes ..."

7. "The model assumptions are": "The assumptions of the most Basic Version of the model are ..."

Further reading must include "Tirole, J. (1988), The Theory of Industrial Organization, MIT Press."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Schmutzler has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Thomas Borek & Stefan Buhler & Armin Schmutzler, 2008. "Analyzing Mergers under Asymmetric Information: A Simple Reduced-Form Approach," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2008 2008-15, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 19:57, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Zhou's comment on this article
Dr. Zhou has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Perfect knowledge is not a characteristic of oligopoly markets. Competitors can be uncertain about their own costs and demands. The sentence "Buyers have only imperfect knowledge as to price,[3] cost and product quality." is wrong. In many cases (those basic oligopoly models), we assume buyers knows all prices and qualities, but there are also cases where imperfect consumer knowledge is introduced."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Zhou has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Zhou, Jidong, 2011. "Multiproduct search," MPRA Paper 37139, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 14:30, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Etro's comment on this article
Dr. Etro has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"There is a weird mix of basic and incomplete theoretical aspects (which should be expanded) and empirical references to national oligopolies"

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Etro has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Federico Etro, 2012. "The Theory of Endogenous Market Structures: A Survey," Working Papers 2012_11, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 20:17, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

oligopoly
An oligopoly (from Greek ὀλίγος, oligos "few" and πωλεῖν, polein "to sell") is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. Oligopolies often result from the desire to maximize profits, which can lead to collusion between companies. This reduces competition, increases prices for consumers, and lowers wages for employees. Many industries have been cited as oligopolistic, including civil aviation, electricity providers, the telecommunications sector, Rail freight markets, food processing, funeral services, sugar refining, beer making, pulp and paper making, and automobile manufacturing. Most countries have laws outlawing anti-competitive behavior. EU competition law prohibits anti-competitive practices such as price-fixing and manipulating market supply and trade among competitors. In the US, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission are tasked with stopping collusion. However, corporations can evade legal consequences through tacit collusion, as collusion can only be proven through actual and direct communication between companies. It is possible for oligopolies to develop without collusion and in the presence of fierce competition among market participants. This is a situation similar to perfect competition, where oligopolists have their own market structure. In this situation, each company in the oligopoly has a large share in the industry and plays a pivotal, unique role. With post-socialist economies, oligopolies may be particularly pronounced. For example in Armenia, where business elites enjoy oligopoly, 19% of the whole economy is monopolized (BEEPS 2009 database), making it the most monopolized country in the region. 27.34.17.230 (talk) 02:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Re formatting page + adding some new content
Hi all. Over the next couple of days I will be reformatting the Wikipedia page on Oligopoly and also adding in some new information as well as adding in some new sources/references. I believe the reformatting is important here as there are many different topics touched on all over the page but could be grouped together and put under the same heading. I also believe the article repeats itself a lot, so in order to be concise and in line with Wikipedia's 'Good Article' criteria, I think this is required. If anyone has any issues with changes that I have made, please let me know. TorinSchneid (talk) 04:34, 8 April 2023 (UTC)