From food items to consumer products, Pakistanis pay significantly higher prices than others in the region.

Being left at the mercy of oligopolies, which have controlled markets since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the consumers have been forced to pay higher prices for, at times, inferior quality goods.

Another newly minted Nobel laureate’s efforts may help Pakistanis break free of the tyrannical control of State monopolies and private oligopolies.

Professor Jean Tirole of France has received the 2014 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his work on market power and regulation. His research has shown how firms gain market power and set prices at the detriment of consumers. His work is as relevant to privatisation-happy Pakistan as it is to developed economies.

Several historians have argued that the Muslim elite in British India wanted to carve out a market where they would limit competition to a select few, resulting in a mutually benefitting oligopoly. The term ‘20 families’ refers to the cartel that has controlled markets and prices since Pakistan’s inception, prompting Pakistan’s poet laureate, Habib Jalib to write his famous poem, ‘Bees Gharanay’.