39 | Monopsony Power
Where a monopoly is an economy in which there is only one seller, a monopsony is an economy in which there is only one buyer. In a monopsony, with only one buyer, it is the buyer who may have pricing power.
As someone who researches inequities in health care, I’ve diligently followed the debate about healthcare reform.
However, most of my friends (and I suspect most Americans) wonder exactly what single payer healthcare is and how will it affect them.
As someone who researches inequities in health care, I’ve diligently followed the debate about healthcare reform.
However, most of my friends (and I suspect most Americans) wonder exactly what single payer healthcare is and how will it affect them.
AIDS has killed more than 36 million people worldwide. There are drugs available to treat AIDS, but the price of one pill is incredibly high in the U.S. — coming in at 25 times higher than its cost. Why is that?
In this video, we explore the costs and benefits of monopolies. We cover how monopolies and patents breed deadweight loss, market inefficiencies, and corruption.
Ever wonder why pharmaceuticals are so expensive? In this video, we show how low elasticity of demand results in monopoly markups
Today on the show, we're launching a three part series on antitrust law, one of the most important but least-understood bodies of law in the United States.
For this first episode in the series, we're starting at the very beginning, in the nineteenth century, with the story of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. We go to Titusville, Pennsylvania, and retrace the steps of muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell as she uncovers the back room deals struck by Rockefeller, then one of the world's richest men. Tarbell's investigative reporting in the early 1900s inspired a court case that helped change the design of the American economy.
This is the second episode in our series on the history of competition, big business and antitrust law in America.
A little more than a hundred years ago, the Supreme Court broke up the Standard Oil company. It was a turning point in the balance of power between enormous companies and the free market. We told that story in the first episode of the series.
This is the third episode in our series on antitrust law in America. Our first episode told the story of Ida Tarbell and how her reporting on John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil changed antitrust law in the early 1900s. Our second episode followed the turn that took place in the 1970s in response to Robert Bork's Antitrust Paradox.
For this episode, we're looking at the present, and toward a future where markets may be dominated by tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google. A new wave of antitrust thinkers is asking if the size and reach of these companies is a threat to competition, and ultimately to consumers. It's the backlash to the backlash introduced by Robert Bork in the seventies, and a reassessment of the relationship between the government and business in the United States.
In this video, we show how the price system allows for people with dispersed knowledge and information about rose production to coordinate global economic activity.