Economics: Market Structure and Firms

Cost and Production

• The term used to describe the effect on total cost of producing one additional unit of output is marginal cost.

Pricing and Production Decisions

• Isoprofit curves show the various combinations of price and output that yield the same level of profit.
• The demand curve represents the various quantities of a product that consumers are willing to buy at different prices.
• Economic surplus refers to the sum of consumer and producer surplus, which is the total benefit derived from the production and consumption of a product.

Firm Size and Structure

• According to the text, the optimal size of a firm is determined by the minimum efficient scale.
• Over half the working population of the UK are employed in large firms because these firms can take advantage of economies of scale and produce goods more efficiently.
• A perfectly competitive market structure is characterized by identical products and firms being price takers.
• Economies of scale occur when a firm's average cost of production decreases as its output increases.
• A characteristic of an oligopoly market structure is that it is dominated by a small number of large firms that have a significant influence on the market.
• Firms become large and successful because they are able to reduce costs and increase efficiency through economies of scale.

Test your knowledge of market structures, economies of scale, and profit maximization in the context of different forms of market structure. This quiz covers topics such as the concept of economies of scale, different forms of market structure, and how firms choose a profit-maximizing combination of price and output.