Technology

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By the mid 20th century, humans had achieved a mastery of technology sufficient to leave the atmosphere of the Earth for the first time and explore space.

Technology is the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization. The word technology comes from the Greek technología (τεχνολογία) — téchnē (τέχνη), an ‘art’, ‘skill’ or ‘craft’ and -logía-λογία), the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline.^[1] The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, or state-of-the-art technology or high technology. Technologies can also be exemplified in a material product, for example an object can be termed state of the art. (

Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species’ ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The human species’ use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.

Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today’s global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisureclass. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.

Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.

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Monopoly

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This article is about the economic term. For the board game, see Monopoly (game). For other uses, see Monopoly (disambiguation).

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Competition law
Basic concepts
History of competition law Monopoly Coercive monopoly Natural monopoly Barriers to entry Market power SSNIP test Relevant market Merger control
Anti-competitive practices
Monopolization Collusion Formation of cartels Price fixing Bid rigging Product bundling and tying Refusal to deal Group boycott Essential facilities Exclusive dealing Dividing territories Conscious parallelism Predatory pricing Misuse of patents and copyrights
Enforcement authorities and organizations
International Competition Network List of competition regulators
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In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos / μονος (alone or single) + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. (This is in contrast to a monopsony which relates to a single entity’s control over a market to purchase a good or service. And contrasted with oligopoly where a few entities exert considerable influence over an industry)^{[1][clarification needed]} Monopolies are thus characterised by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods.^[2] The verb “monopolise” refers to the process by which a firm gains persistently greater market share than what is expected under perfect competition.

A monopoly must be distinguished from monopsony, in which there is only one buyer of a product or service ; a monopoly may also have monopsony control of a sector of a market. Likewise, a monopoly should be distinguished from a cartel (a form of oligopoly), in which several providers act together to coordinate services, prices or sale of goods. Monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies are all situations where one or a few of the entities have market power and therefore must interact with their customers (monopoly), suppliers (monopsony) and the other firms (oligopoly) in a game theoretic manner – meaning that expectations about their behavior affects other players’ choice of strategy and vice versa. This is to be contrasted with the model of perfect competition where firms are price takers and do not have market power. Monopolists typically produce fewer goods and sell them at a higher price than under perfect competition, resulting in abnormal and sustained profit. (See also Bertrand, Cournot or Steckelbergmarket share, market concentration, Monopoly profit, industrial economics). equilibria, market power,

Monopolies can form naturally or through vertical or horizontal mergers. A monopoly is said to be coercive when the monopoly firm actively prohibits competitors from entering the field or punishes competitors who do (see Chainstore paradox).

In many jurisdictions, competition laws place specific restrictions on monopolies. Holding a dominant position or a monopoly in the market is not illegal in itself, however certain categories of behavior can, when a business is dominant, be considered abusive and therefore be met with legal sanctions. 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, copyright, and trademarks are all examples of government granted and enforced monopolies. The government may also reserve the venture for itself, thus forming a government monopoly.

Contents [show] 1 Market structures 2 Characteristics 3 Sources of monopoly power 4 Monopoly versus competitive markets 5 The inverse elasticity rule 6 Price discrimination and capturing consumer surplus 6.1 Pricing with market power 6.2 Purpose of price discrimination 6.3 Conditions for price discrimination 6.3.1 Market power 6.3.2 Willingness to pay 6.3.3 Enforcement 6.3.4 Basic forms 6.3.5 Example 6.3.6 Classifying customers 7 Monopoly and efficiency 7.1 Natural monopoly 7.2 Government-granted monopoly 8 Monopolist shutdown rule 9 Breaking up monopolies 10 Law 11 Historical monopolies 11.1 Examples of legal (and or) illegal monopolies 12 Countering monopolies 13 See also 14 Notes and references 15 Further reading 16 External links 16.1 Criticism

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[edit] Market structures

In economics, monopoly is a pivotal area to the study of market structures, which directly concerns normative aspects of economic competition, and sets the foundations for fields such as industrial organization and economics of regulation. There are four basic types of market structures under traditional economic analysis: perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly and monopoly. A monopoly is a market structure in which a single supplier produces and sells the product. If there is a single seller in a certain industry and there are no close substitutes for the goods being produced, then the market structure is that of a “pure monopoly”. Sometimes, there are many sellers in an industry and/or there exist many close substitutes for the goods being produced, but nevertheless firms retain some market power. This is called monopolistic competition, whereas in oligopoly the main theoretical framework revolves around firm’s strategic interactions.

In general, the main results from this theory compare price-fixing methods across market structures, analyse the impact of a certain structure on welfare, and play with different variations of technological/demand assumptions in order to assess its consequences on the abstract model of society. Most economic textbooks follow the practice of carefully explaining the perfect competition model, only because of its usefulness to understand “departures” from it (the so called imperfect competition models).

The boundaries of what constitutes a market and what doesn’t is a relevant distinction to make in economic analysis. In a general equilibrium context, a good is a specific concept entangling geographical and time-related characteristics (grapes sold in October 2009 in Moscow is a different good from grapes sold in October 2009 in New York). Most studies of market structure relax a little their definition of a good, allowing for more flexibility at the identification of substitute-goods. Therefore, one can find an economic analysis of the market of grapes in Russia, for example, which is not a market in the strict sense of general equilibrium theory.

[edit] Characteristics

• Single seller: In a monopoly there is one seller of the monopolised good who produces all the output.^[3] Therefore, the whole market is being served by a single firm, and for practical purposes, the firm is the same as the industry.
• Market power: Market power is the ability to affect the terms and conditions of exchange so that the price of the product is set by the firm (price is not imposed by the market as in perfect competition).^[4][5] Although a monopoly’s market power is high it is still limited by the demand side of the market. A monopoly faces a negatively sloped demand curve not a perfectly inelastic curve. Consequently, any price increase will result in the loss of some customers.

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