Article Response

Description

These article responses are centered around market structures. The structure that companies find themselves in will largely determine how they can choose the price of their products and how much revenue they earn. Notice that you will be writing a response to an article about a specific company or industry in one of the market structures. Of course, we all know by name many companies that influence our daily lives. Pick one you want to research, find a relevant article about it, and respond. The more you know about a company or industry that’s important to you, the better your future consumption decisions will be.

Instructions
This article response corresponds with topics from Units 9 – 13
 Choose one of the three topic choices below
 Search for a media, journal or magazine article that addresses the topic
 Answer the questions below in sentence and paragraph format.
o Do not answer the questions in turn, but instead write no more than one page (double
spaced) of prose that summarizes the article. The summary must contain your answers
to the questions located below the relevant topic.

Topic 1: Monopoly topics (market power, high margins, natural monopolies, price
discrimination)
Question 1: Describe the article’s chosen monopoly. Which company is it and in which industry does it
reside?
Question 2: On which behavior/impact by/of the monopoly does the article focus?
Question 3: Why is this behavior or impact interesting? Who does the behavior or impact affect?
Question 4: Does the government have an opportunity to improve the market outcome? If so, what
policy could it use to improve the market? If not, explain why.
Question 5: Provide your normative appraisal of the monopoly’s behavior/impact; ie. is it good or bad
for society (or you personally).

Topic 2: Oligopoly topics (market concentration, competitive strategies, cartels, antitrust
law/behavior)
Question 1: Describe the article’s chosen oligopoly. Which industry is it? Which country or countries is
the oligopoly located in?
Question 2: In particular, on which facet of oligopoly does the article focus? Market concentration,
antitrust / cartel / collusion behavior?
Question 3: Does this facet of oligopoly typically favor the firms in the oligopoly or the consumers of the
oligopoly’s production? What does this tell you about the outcomes being reached in the normal form
games.
Question 4: Does the article predict, or can you predict, how this industry will look in the long
run? Does it get more competitive or less competitive?
Question 5: Provide your normative appraisal of the oligopoly’s existence/outcome; ie. is it good or bad
for society (or you personally).

Topic 3: Monopolistic competition topics (product differentiation, advertising, excess capacity)

Question 1: Describe the article’s monopolistically competitive industry or firm.

Question 2: How is product differentiation achieved in this industry or firm’s products?
Question 3: How pervasive is this industry or firm’s advertising? Does the advertising typically provide
useful and important information about the product? Or is the advertising usually trying to convince
consumers to purchase an otherwise very similar product to its competitors?
Question 4: Does there appear to be long term growth in the industry? Or does it appear to be in
decline? Depending on which it is, what long run effects for consumers can you predict?
Question 5: Provide your normative appraisal of the monopolist competition topic in this article; ie. is it
good or bad for society (or you personally)