The dynamics of perfect markets notes

These are the key terms used to describe perfect markets, and the costs, revenue and profit of a firm in such a market. A market in which no single buyer or seller can noticeably influence the…

The study of perfect markets builds on the basic ideas of production, cost and revenue. This section reviews them: the short run and the long run, the law of diminishing returns, the costs of a firm…

Perfect competition is the market structure that all other market structures are compared with. This section explains the concept, examines each characteristic of a perfect market, shows why the…

A perfect market has two levels, which must be kept apart: the individual business (a single firm, or producer) and the industry (all the firms selling the same homogeneous product). The industry…

A market structure describes how a market is organised: how many firms operate, what they sell, how easily new firms can enter, and how much influence sellers have over the price. This overview…

In a perfect market, the individual business is a price taker. It uses the market price and its own cost curves to decide how much to produce, and the result can be an economic profit, an economic…

This section explains the method for drawing graphs of perfect markets: the order in which to draw the curves, how to label the axes, and how to read quantity and price from the finished graph. It…

This section covers South Africa's competition policy: why government regulates competition, what the Competition Act, 1998 (Act 89 of 1998) sets out to do, the three institutions that enforce it…