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   krishna-agrawala Teacher
   Graduate School

   eNotes Editor

   Monopoly refers to the nature of market for a product which is supplied by just one supplier. Many socialist and communist countries have many industries totally owned by the government. Market for product for products of all those industries in such economies will be monopolistic markets. Even other countries that prefer to call themselves democratic, capitalist, or free economies may have some public services such as electricity, water, sewage, postage, and many others operated by the government. Foe example, the railway service in India is totally government owned. All these organization also qualify as monopolies.

   In general governments do not allow private monopolies to operate at national levels in their countries. But it is possible to have effective monopolies at local level. For example though a city may have different providers of utilities like power and gas, but in a particular locality only one of these may be providing service.

   Oligopoly refers to the nature of market for a product which is supplied by a few dominant supplier. Each of these suppliers has some power to influence the market prices and supplies but this power is not absolute. For example Coca Cola re two dominant player in soft drink markets in many countries. Operating system for PC's is another product having monopolistic market. The market has only limited operating systems like Windows, Linux and Leopard. In market for operating systems the position of Windows supplied by Microsoft is so dominant that sometimes Microsoft is accused of adopting monopolistic practices.

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   Posted by krishna-agrawala on Friday September 4, 2009 at 12:45 AM