Why prices often show less variation under oligopoly than under other types of market structure
Oligopoly is a market structure, which has some distinctive qualities that separate it from the others. Most notably they are that oligopoly has barriers of entry and is made of only a few companies, which supply the majority of the market and are interdependent. In other market structures price of the product and other decisions are often based on technical information such as marginal cost or demand (when you are a monopoly) but what makes oligopoly unique from all other market structures is that companies cannot base their decisions solely on technical information they must be aware of and react to their competitors.
Oligopoly is also a distinctive market structure because price is not usually used as a competitive tool. There are exceptions of oligopolies that engage in price wars, for example AMD and Intel, semiconductor producers, both use fierce price lowering tactics because when one of them decreases their price of a product the other has nothing else to do but follow in order not to loose a big market share. Intel and AMD price wars are beneficial to the consumers but not to the companies which each year miss their target revenues and get lower profits. Relatively stable prices under oligopoly, which are called sticky prices or rigid prices, is a strong feature of this market structure and this essay will try to explain why such prices exist.
This essay will analyze situations when companies do not coordinate their actions (Non-collusive behavior) and when they do, implicitly (tacit collusion) and explicitly (formal collusion).
I. Non-collusive behavior
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