College ~25 hours
Market Structures Mastery: Competition to Monopoly
Every market sits somewhere between perfect competition and monopoly, and where it sits determines prices, profits, and who benefits. This path tours each market structure with the same scorecard — pricing power, efficiency, and the role of strategy — then extends the analysis to labor and financial markets and the design of auctions and platforms. Game theory is the thread that ties oligopoly, bargaining, and market design together.
Steps
Step 1: What Defines a Market Structure?
Barriers to entry, product differentiation, and pricing power — the dimensions that classify every market.
Step 2: Perfect Competition
The efficiency benchmark: price-taking firms, zero long-run profit, and maximum total surplus.
Step 3: Monopoly
How market power raises price and restricts output, plus the case for — and limits of — regulation.
Step 4: Monopolistic Competition
Many sellers, differentiated products: branding, advertising, and the excess-capacity result.
Step 5: Oligopoly and Game Theory
A few interdependent firms: collusion, cartels, and the strategic logic of competition.
Step 6: Labor Markets
Wages as prices: derived demand, human capital, and what shifts labor supply and demand.
Step 7: Capital and Financial Markets
Interest, present value, and risk — how financial markets allocate capital across time.
Step 8: Market Design and Auctions
Engineering markets on purpose: auction formats, matching, and platform design.
Step 9: Capstone: Comparing Structures
Score every structure on efficiency, innovation, and fairness — then test yourself.