Market structure — Features of Perfect Competition, Monopoly, Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly

Buy vegetables from any stall in a Mumbai sabzi mandi and the price barely differs between sellers. Buy electricity and you have exactly one supplier. Buy toothpaste and there are a dozen brands, each convinced theirs is different. Buy cement and four or five large companies quietly watch each other's prices. Four markets, four structures — and the whole of competition law, later in your degree, rests on telling them apart.

In two minutes

Market structure classifies markets by the number of sellers, the nature of the product and the ease of entry, running from perfect competition (many sellers, identical product) to monopoly (one seller, no substitute), with monopolistic competition and oligopoly in between.

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