For your third assignment, you are asked to pick a product and describe its market structure. You may remember from class that there is a spectrum of markets, with perfect competition on one side and monopoly on the other. In class I also described characteristics which cause a market to fall into one of these categories. if you think it might fall in the middle, such as monopolistic competition or oligopoly, you may have to look up some things about that market. Try searching market structures as a starting point. For instance, I might choose a product or company, let's say, Time Warner Cable TV. i then want to argue why this company faces a certain typle of market, appealing to the characteristics from class and what i know about Perf. Comp. rms and Monopolies. i might argue that cable companies face High barriers to entry - initially they have to lay all the cable, very expensive (your textbook lists several barriers to entry in chapter 10) One Seller obviously Full info but High Shopping costs A satellite technician has to come check your home out for service Different Products - Well, not really, cable companies provide a pretty similar product. I also might argue that Comcast's prots do not seem to be declining with time and that they seem to be a price maker. Looking at all these characteristics, I'd conclude that even though Comcast doesn't provide a very unique product, the high xed costs (barriers to entry) and the shopping costs involved still lead to this market functioning as a monopoly, which is verified by what we know about prots and prices for that type of firm. This is just a rough outline of what I might say, you guys should type it out in sentences and paragraphs and explain why you think you are right about your arguments. You may argue that your firm faces any of the four market types, or represents a mix. The key here is to think about what makes a market act in a certain way, what the results of a market type are, and how that translates to the real world