Economic Definition of barrier to entry. Defined.
Offline Version: PDF
Term barrier to entry Definition: An institutional, government, technological, or economic restriction on the entry of firms into a market or industry. The four primary barriers to entry are: resource ownership, patents and copyrights, government restrictions, and start-up costs. Barriers to entry are a key reason for market control and the inefficiency that this generates. In particular, monopoly, oligopoly, monopsony, and oligopsony often owe their market control to assorted barriers to entry. By way of contrast, perfect competition, monopolistic competition, and monopsonistic competition have few if any barriers to entry and thus little or no market control.
Permalink: https://glossary.econguru.com/economic-term/barrier+to+entry