Duopsony

Remember monopsony? Ok, then see: Monopsony. That’s when there’s one buyer. Like those one-company towns where pretty much everyone in the town was employed by one employer, who was buying all of the labor. If there’s nowhere else to sell your labor in that town, you kinda have to take the wage they pay you. There’s no other company who might pay you better, or that you could threaten to run to. Which means the one buyer in a monopsony is holding alllll the power. Mua-haha.

Duopsonies are like monopsonies, except there are two buyers instead of one. As with monopsonies, the buyers have a lot of leverage over the sellers, since the sellers have nobody else to sell to except the two buyers.

For instance, if a town is a two-company town, it’d be a duopsony. While there could be some amount of competition since there’s two of them, duopsonies still don’t provide much competition. It’s in the duopsonies' best interest for them to utilize their power and keep their money. Take Amazon and Walmart as an example: any merch suppliers who want to move lots of goods to the American market need to cut a deal with one of these two companies, which gives Amazon and Walmart lots of “here are how things are going to go” power at the bargaining table. “Bargaining”...yeah, if you can call it that.