Perfect Competition Flashcards
What are the factors used to determine market structure?
- Number of firms
- product differentiation
- ease of entry / barriers
- extent to which information/ knowledge is perfect
- influence of individual firms / suppliers on price
What are the objectives of a firm ?
- Profit maximisation
- sales maximisation
- revenue maximisation
- growth maximisation
- market share
- corporate social responsibility
- quality
What is the divorce of ownership and control?
The owners and those who manage the firm are different groups and have different objectives. Only applies to PLCs
What is the principal agent problem?
The principal (owner) appoints an agent (manager) to perform tasks on their behalf
The incentives of the owner may differ from those of the manager
How do you cope with the principal agent problem?
- Employee share - ownership scheme
- shareholder activism
- delist (buy all shares back)
What did Galbraith theorise about shareholders?
They are happy with reasonable profits which leads to Satisficing due to imperfect information
What are the features of a perfectly competitive market?
- Many small firms
- homogeneous goods
- all firms are price takers
- perfect knowledge
- freedom of entry / exit
- Large number of buyers
- factors of production are completely mobile
What are barriers to exit?
Sunk costs which are the start up costs you can’t get back
e.g. market research (can’t sell it on)
What are the statements to remember about the graphs showing the market and firms?
- We assume that all firms are short run profit maximisers - this occurs at Q when MC = MR
- Q, shows where output is (determined by marginals) to read profit you use averages
- This firm makes normal profit - this is because at Q AC is equal to AR
Why does MR = P on a firm graph?
It is the addition to the total revenue of selling one extra unit of a good, since the price is always the same, p=mr. The addition is always p
What would a firm do if they were making a sub normal profit?
They would leave the market as they have no barriers to exit and perfect factor mobility
What happens if a new firms enters a perfectly competitive market?
A new form entering a supernormal profit market is not advantageous for the old firm • they produce less as Q1 is shifted left.
Supernormal profit attracts new firms in the market (incentives them)
What is supernormal profit?
Where AC is lower than AR - occurs in the long run
When is the graph productively and allocativeley efficient ?
Q is productively efficient as it is the lowest AC
Allocative efficiency occurs at Q where P = MC
What happens when P is greater than MC?
Allocative inefficient signals to the firm to make more, consumes value the good at P. The MC of that good is less