Question

Kit-N-Sit, Inc. and Kittysitters, Inc. are two cat-sitting services in Kent, Ohio. There are no other cat-sitting services so the market is considered to be a duopoly. According to the kinked demand curve theory, if Kit-N-Sit, Inc. increases prices, Kittysitters, Inc. will:______
a. respond aggressively by increasing prices drastically.
b. respond aggressively by cutting prices.
c. respond aggressively by increasing prices moderately.
d. sue Kit-N-Sit for monetary damages in court.
e. do nothing and leave prices unchanged.

Answer 1

Answer:

The correct answer ise. do nothing and leave prices unchanged.

Explanation:

It has been observed that many oligopolistic industries exhibit an appreciable degree of price rigidity or stability. In other words, in many oligopolistic industries prices remain sticky or inflexible, that is, there is no tendency for oligopolists to change the price even if economic conditions undergo a change.

There have been many explanations of this price rigidity in the oligopoly and the most popular explanation is the so-called crooked demand curve hypothesis. The crooked demand curve hypothesis was presented independently by Paul M. Sweezy, an American economist, and by Hall and Hitch, Oxford economists.

It is to explain the price and production under oligopoly with product differentiation, that economists often use the hypothesis of the crooked demand curve. This is because when products under oligopoly differ, it is unlikely that when a company increases its price, all customers abandon it because some customers are intimately linked to it due to product differentiation.

As a result, the demand curve facing a company under differentiated oligopoly is not perfectly elastic. On the other hand, under the oligopoly without product differentiation, when a company increases its price, all its customers leave it, so that the demand curve faced by an oligopolist that produces a homogeneous product can be perfectly elastic.