Working in your assigned groups, students will examine and discuss each of the four market structures (perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly) studied in chapters 5 & 6. Students will provide an example of one actual business that you believe operates in each category (do not use Manitoba Hydro, MPI, MLCC, Canadian Pacific Railway, or any Canadian Banks in your examples).

Your assignment should include the following 4 elements:

A brief description of the company and its product/service

a general description of who its competitors are and roughly how many

how hard or easy would it be to enter that business, and

the company's market power (price-makers or price takers)

Example: Canadian Pacific Railway is a Canadian corporation that uses trains and trucks to transport goods across North America. Canadian Pacific Railway competes in an oligopoly as there are very few competitors in the rail industry, but more in the trucking industry. The barriers to entry are high as it would take a great deal of capital to purchase trains and trucks, but also would be almost impossible to build a national rail line. The company does have some market power as there are few substitutes to transport goods across Canada and therefore, they can control the pricing more than their customers will be able to.

Monopolistic Competition

Monopoly