IB Econ HL Section B

This article doesn't specifically mention a natural monopoly, but it refers to one because it is an industry with high sunk costs that is more efficient with less firms and central infrastructure.

This article addresses the price discrimination in the American healthcare system. It pertains to both medical treatments and procedures, as well as medications. Specifically, it talks about the price discrimination that occurs against the lower and middle classes. This is a growing problem, seeing as many treatments are becoming highly advanced (and therefore very expensive).

This is a discussion between specialists Ken Auletta, Fred Wilson, and John Markoff concerning Google's current position in the market and where it may hope to progress in the future. Since Google has few competitors and many economies of scale, it is very close to a natural monopoly. However, what will happen to Google in the future? What about developments in technology and industry? Google will have to work hard to stay on top.

This article is about holiday shopping in local stores. Many stores offer sales during the holiday seasons. This is a form of price discrimination, as it is different prices charged for the same product based on time of year.

Discount retailer Dollarama says solid sales driven by new, higher-priced products and the opening of 42 stores last year helped boost its profit in the latest quarter. Although the firm is a dollar-shop, its controversial price tagging of over $1 is bringing product - essntially a price discrimination to increase its profit.

This article mentions one natural monopoly in Brazil, that one of eletric power. The electricity company Furnas is now facing serious problems in Brazil when trying to provide electric power, due to bad weather conditions, which have come so far as to cause a blackout in 18 states.

How far will a nation go for energy? Sweden is now allocating its resources in a more productive manner: bunnies are turned into heat. Due to the overpopulation of rabbits in the region, Konvex, an incinerator firm, uses rabbits to heat homes in Sweden. Since there are so many rabbits, representatives explain, this method is quite efficient in terms of energy production.

That's a reall interesting article. Who would think of burning rabbits to make green fuel? It is efficient but it might cause a problem with the animal rights groups.

This article is about the Intel using illegal methods to maintain a monopoly. The New York Attorney General says that the lack of competition means that customers are deprived of good prices.

Do you think the government should intervene here and regulate the prices so that the consumers can have better prices? If the government regulated the prices consumers would be more satisfied and the services would work better. The government could also bring in competition to regulate the prices.

Colombia-based multi-utility EPM has launched a prepaid electric power program for marginalized communities. EPM has monpoly over the electricity and water-supply which makes the firm narturally monopolistic.

This article shows a natural monopoly in the market for chocolate. There are four main chocolate companies and the tests talked about in the article are to try and see which chocolate is voted the best. The chocolate companies are competing to stop themselves from being kicked out of the market because they stop selling and to stop one of the companies becoming the main producer for chocolate because this would mean the market would become a natural monopoly and the other three would have to shut down.

The Canadian methonal producer Methanex is planning to start operating its second methanol power plant to operate two plants at reduce rates and increase production rate by 20% over the next year. Productivity is major factor that influences that Average Cost of the gas consumption.

This article is about an agreement between three of Europe's biggest gas monopolies, Russia's Gazprom, Italy's Eni and France's EDF, to share the South Stream gas pipeline project. Natural gas is a natural monopoly because of very high startup costs and capital costs (for example the building of oil pipelines).

This article is about a mining company in Zimbabwe. Since the company is licensed by the government to mine there while other countries aren't, they have a natural monopoly.

This is an opinion column for the SF Gate that describes monopolization of the taxicab market in the city of Oakland by the Friendly Cab Company and the problems have arisen as a result. The author also offers solutions to the problem, which includes lowering the gate fee and lowering the license fee.

Carrefour Indonesia is in hot water with the Business Competition Supervisory Commission. Carrefour has been accused of causing unfair business competition by purchasing over 50% of market shares in the modern market. In this case, monopoly is not rewarded, but rather punished.

In Chicago, parking meters are a profitable deal. In fact, Chicago's parking meter operators are bringing in a profit of approximately $1.1 million per week. Recently, Chicago Parking Meters LLC purchased the right to all parking fees in the city for the next 75 years. The profits will be huge, especially with the city's 36,000 parking meters.

Small carmakers continue producing a wide range of cars that can appeal to various customers. The most noticeable factor is the variety of brands competing with one another. This competitive market is entirely about cars - both imported and domestic.

This article is about the new Google operating system for netbooks. Google is attempting to take over this part of the PC industry, which is currently dominated by Microsoft.

The two big players of the online-retailer shops are Amazon and Wal-Mart. As the holiday season approaches, their price-discoutngin battles becomes intense every now and then. This ties into the topic of monopoly because these two firms dominates the online-retail industry.

Although this article does not mention any monopoly as such, the word 'merger' did capture my attention, since we studied the concept in the present chapter. In the article, the author is explaining the coming co-operation between two of the most important airlines in China; I have thus implied that these airlines are merging in order to become something close to a monopoly, since they do not want to risk competition uncertainties.