ABSTRACT
Most textbooks include some discussion of market competition versus monopoly, overemphasizing the case of perfect competition (in which there are many small sellers and buyers, easy entry and exit, all units of the product are identical, and everyone has good information). By presenting competitive markets first and extolling their virtues of efficiency and lower prices, textbooks give the false impression that all or most markets are highly competitive. Some texts include a taxonomy of the gradation from perfect competition to monopoly (one seller) and include the case of oligopoly (a few firms dominate a market), but the books offer no model to describe this last case—when in fact oligopolies dominate modern capitalism.
