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Demand Curves Perceived by a Perfectly Competitive Firm and by a Monopoly

Consider a monopoly firm, comfortably surrounded by barriers to entry so that it need not fear competition from other producers. How will this monopoly choose its profit-maximizing quantity of output, and what price will it charge? Profits for the monopolist, like any firm, will be equal to total revenues minus total costs. The pattern of costs for the monopoly can be analyzed within the same framework as the costs of a perfectly competitive firm—that is, by using total cost, fixed cost, variable cost, marginal cost, average cost, and average variable cost. However, because a monopoly faces no competition, its situation and its decision process will differ from that of a perfectly competitive firm.

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A perfectly competitive firm acts as a price taker. The demand curve it perceives appears in Figure 1(a). The horizontal demand curve means that, from the viewpoint of the perfectly competitive firm, it could sell either a relatively low quantity like Ql or a relatively high quantity like Qh at the market price P.

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While a monopolist can charge any price for its product, that price is nonetheless constrained by demand for the firm’s product. No monopolist, even one that is thoroughly protected by high barriers to entry, can require consumers to purchase its product. Because the monopolist is the only firm in the market, its demand curve is the same as the market demand curve, which is, unlike that for a perfectly competitive firm, downward-sloping.

Figure 1 illustrates this situation. The monopolist can either choose a point like R with a low price (Pl) and high quantity (Qh), or a point like S with a high price (Ph) and a low quantity (Ql), or some intermediate point. Setting the price too high will result in a low quantity sold, and will not bring in much revenue. Conversely, setting the price too low may result in a high quantity sold, but because of the low price, it will not bring in much revenue either. The challenge for the monopolist is to strike a profit-maximizing balance between the price it charges and the quantity that it sells.

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Total Cost and Total Revenue for a Monopolist

In order to determine profits for a monopolist, we need to first identify total revenues and total costs. An example for the hypothetical HealthPill firm is shown in Figure 2.

Total costs for a monopolist follow the same rules as for perfectly competitive firms. In other words, total costs increase with output at an increasing rate. Total revenue, by contrast, is different from perfect competition. Since a monopolist faces a downward sloping demand curve, the only way it can sell more output is by reducing its price. Selling more output raises revenue, but lowering price reduces it. Thus, the shape of total revenue isn’t clear. Let’s explore this using the data in Table 1, which shows points along the demand curve (quantity demanded and price), and then calculates total revenue by multiplying price times quantity. (In this example, we give the output as 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, for the sake of simplicity. If you prefer a dash of greater realism, you can imagine that the pharmaceutical company measures these output levels and the corresponding prices per 1,000 or 10,000 pills.) As Figure 2 illustrates, total revenue for a monopolist has the shape of a hill, first rising, next flattening out, and then falling.

Table 1. Total Costs and Total Revenues of HealthPill Quantity

Price

Total Revenue

Total Cost

1 1,200 1,200 500 2 1,100 2,200 750 3 1,000 3,000 1,000 4 900 3,600 1,250 5 800 4,000 1,650 6 700 4,200 2,500 7 600 4,200 4,000 8 500 4,000 6,400

In this example, total revenue is highest at a quantity of 6 or 7. However, the monopolist is not seeking to maximize revenue, but instead to earn the highest possible profit. In the HealthPill example in Figure 2, the highest profit will occur at the quantity where total revenue is the farthest above total cost. This looks to be somewhere in the middle of the graph, but where exactly? It is easier to see the profit maximizing level of output by using the marginal approach, to which we turn next.

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Marginal Revenue and Marginal Cost for a Monopolist

In the real world, a monopolist often does not have enough information to analyze its entire total revenues or total costs curves; after all, the firm does not know exactly what would happen if it were to alter production dramatically. But a monopolist often has fairly reliable information about how changing output by small or moderate amounts will affect its marginal revenues and marginal costs, because it has had experience with such changes over time and because modest changes are easier to extrapolate from current experience. A monopolist can use information on marginal revenue and marginal cost to seek out the profit-maximizing combination of quantity and price.

Table 2 expands Table 1 using the figures on total costs and total revenues from the HealthPill example to calculate marginal revenue and marginal cost. Recall that marginal revenue is the additional revenue the firm receives from selling one more (or a few more) units of output. Similarly, marginal cost is the additional cost the firm incurs from producing and selling one more (or a few more) units of output. This monopoly faces a typical U-shaped average cost curve and upward-sloping marginal cost curve, as shown in Figure 3.

Table 2. Costs and Revenues of HealthPill Quantity

Total Revenue

Marginal Revenue

Total Cost

Marginal Cost

1 1,200 1,200 500 500 2 2,200 1,000 775 275 3 3,000 800 1,000 225 4 3,600 600 1,250 250 5 4,000 400 1,650 400 6 4,200 200 2,500 850 7 4,200 0 4,000 1,500 8 4,000 -200 6,400 2,400

Notice that marginal revenue is zero at a quantity of 7, and turns negative at quantities higher than 7. It may seem counterintuitive that marginal revenue could ever be zero or negative: after all, doesn’t an increase in quantity sold always mean more revenue? For a perfect competitor, each additional unit sold brought a positive marginal revenue, because marginal revenue was equal to the given market price. However, a monopolist can sell a larger quantity and see a decline in total revenue, since in order to sell more output, the monopolist must cut the price. As the quantity sold becomes higher, at some point the drop in price is proportionally more than the increase in greater quantity of sales, causing a situation where more sales bring in less revenue. In other words, marginal revenue is negative.

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A monopolist can determine its profit-maximizing price and quantity by analyzing the marginal revenue and marginal costs of producing an extra unit. If the marginal revenue exceeds the marginal cost, then the firm can increase profit by producing one more unit of output.

For example, at an output of 4 in Figure 3, marginal revenue is 600 and marginal cost is 250, so producing this unit will clearly add to overall profits. At an output of 5, marginal revenue is 400 and marginal cost is 400, so producing this unit still means overall profits are unchanged. However, expanding output from 5 to 6 would involve a marginal revenue of 200 and a marginal cost of 850, so that sixth unit would actually reduce profits. Thus, the monopoly can tell from the marginal revenue and marginal cost that of the choices in the table, the profit-maximizing level of output is 5.

The monopoly could seek out the profit-maximizing level of output by increasing quantity by a small amount, calculating marginal revenue and marginal cost, and then either increasing output as long as marginal revenue exceeds marginal cost or reducing output if marginal cost exceeds marginal revenue. This process works without any need to calculate total revenue and total cost. Thus, a profit-maximizing monopoly should follow the rule of producing up to the quantity where marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost—that is, MR = MC. This quantity is easy to identify graphically, where MR and MC intersect.