Real life examples of monopoly?

Hi all,

While I am doing revision for my econs, I cannot really think of real life examples for the 3 market structure Perfect Competitions, Monopoly, Monopolistic com. This is what I can think of, do correct me if I am on the wrong track...

Perfect competitions
Egg sellers in the wet market selling eggs-Homogenenous product(all eggs are the same)
-Many buyers, many sellers
-Free entry and exit
-Infomation and mobility(sames infos and transportation/delivery)

Monopoly
Microsoft-Homogenenous product(Window Vista Operating System)
-One Seller
-High Barriers to entry
-Infomation and mobility
(For this not very sure as...there is also other compettiors of OS like Unix, SUN)

Monopolistic
Sony Digital-Hetogenous product(camera with sony designs, different from the rest of the retailer)
-Many sellers, many buyers
-Free Entry and Exit
-Infomation and mobility(same)

any help will be appreciated, thanks

Reply 1

aldsz87

Microsoft is not an example of monopoly as you have other OS ,as you mentioned like Linux, Unix. And I don't think there are high barriers to entry also. However I can't think of any other present day example of monopoly. But in the past there was De Beers which had a monopoly in the diamond market till about a decade back when a Israeli competitor(can't remember the name) entered into the scene.
Your example of monopolistic competition is correct i think. Don't know about your perfect competition example, it could be right. PC usually exists in agricultural products whose prices are fixed by the government.

Reply 2

waternut84

Hey alds87, thank you for taking the time to reply to my message. Hmm..kk..at least i am more confident in quotng the examples now.

Reply 3

Narev

Hi,

for monopoly, could you mention (beneficial) drugs?

Ie, drugs to cure certain types of diseases.

There'd be a monopoly on it, since companies like GlaxoSmithKline would search for a cure on some disease, then patent it.

Reply 4

waternut84

Hi Narev, nice to hear frm you. I think you haf a point there. Will take note of that. Thanks

Reply 5

02mik_e

yes glaxiokilinesmith or whatever it is called is to a certain extent a monopoly, but that is because of government legislation that says you can only make medicine with a license.

Reply 6

Master-Marly

Up until recently, The Post Office.

Reply 7

danny111

amazon. google. can be argued to have such market power that this is in effect monopoly power.

Reply 8

BlueTrain

Any company in "real life" that has > 25% market share is considered a monopoly, so there are lots of examples.

Reply 9

neiljeff123

microsoft had until recently a monopoly on web broswers. but it really depends on your definition of monopoly, some define it as 25% on the market which gives scope for quite a few examples