Bankers push back against any notion of oligopoly.
"The mortgage business is extraordinarily competitive," said Franklin Codel, head of mortgage production at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.
There are other factors at work. For one thing, fees charged to lenders by government-controlled mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are set to rise this year. The increases paid for the payroll-tax break passed by Congress in December.
Analysts stress it is difficult to disentangle how much of the spread is due to pricing power from banks with more control of the market, and how much might represent structurally higher costs of doing business in the U.S. mortgage market reshaped by the crisis.
Monique T on 12 Feb 12This article describes the transition of the Canadian Wheat Board after the Canadian government ended its monopoly. This means the wheat farmers in Western Canada are now going to have to be more competitive as they don't have a monopoly over the industry, and so the industry is ideally transitioning from a concentrated market structure to a competitive market structure.
