20 marks
Q8 Evaluate the gains from a sole buyer, such as British Sugar purchasing from 3 000 UK beet growers, with diagrams.
Edexcel · 9EC0 / 8EC0 / WEC11–14
Monopsony comes up in 9 questions across the Edexcel A Level, AS and International A Level past papers (9EC0 / 8EC0 / WEC11–14), worth 88 marks between them. They run from 2017 to 2025 and appear on A Level Paper 1, International A Level Unit 3.
Tariffs run from 1 to 25 marks. The commonest instructions are Evaluate (3), Explain (2), Calculate (MCQ) (2). Specification points covered: 3.3.3.7, 3.4.6.
Q8 Evaluate the gains from a sole buyer, such as British Sugar purchasing from 3 000 UK beet growers, with diagrams.
Q5(b) Apply monopsony to explain why public sector nurses saw smaller pay increases than private sector staff.
Q3 Work out the marginal cost of hiring one extra worker when all 50 staff move from $1 500 to $1 600 weekly.
Q9 Taking a firm holding monopsony power, evaluate what that means for workers and suppliers, as with Walmart's 10 500 stores across 24 countries squeezing farm producers.
Q4 Work out the marginal cost of hiring one more engineer when the wage must rise for all 40 existing staff.
Q6 Argentina's competitive nursing labour market became monopsonistic after universal healthcare was introduced; identify the most likely combination of effects on wages and employment.
Q7(b) Set out the meaning of a monopsony employer, as Extract C uses that phrase.
Q8 Evaluate the harm a monopsony buyer can inflict in markets such as book retailing, where Amazon is accused of squeezing publishers.
Q6(b) Take Figure 2 and Extract A and weigh up how supermarkets' monopsony power affects food suppliers and shoppers alike.
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