Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

INTRODUCTION

A monopoly is said to exist where one person or a company controls at least one-third of a local or national market. The attitude of the public in many countries towards complete and partial monopolies has for many years been one of acute and distinct opposition. This has been mainly due to the abuses of monopoly which include: (i) high prices and restricted output; (ii) wrong allocation of resources; (iii) abuse of investors by monopolists painting alluring pictures of high profits and perpetual exploitation of the market; (iv) preventing inventions since a monopolist’s profits do not depend upon continuous progress in production; (v) increasing the instability of the economic system; (vi) unfair trade practices such as price discrimination, ...