Bilateral Monopoly

When you play the board game Monopoly with just two people. It's still more fun than "Unilateral Monopoly," which just involves rolling dice, moving a pewter thimble around and collecting $200 every so often.

In financial lingo, a "bilateral monopoly" refers to a situation where the seller holds a monopoly on the thing they are selling and the buyer is the only available buyer. The scenario involves a monopoly moving in both directions, both supply and demand.

Used as the basis of some academic negotiation analysis, bilateral monopolies are extremely rare in real life. Near-enough examples occasionally come up in some labor situations. A region's only manufacturer vs. a large labor union, for instance. It also comes up in some government contracts, where there's only one viable supplier and no outside private market for the product.