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1.4: Perfect Competition and Supply and Demand

  • Page ID
    3974
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    Learning Objective

    1. Describe perfect competition, and explain how supply and demand interact to set prices in a free market system.

    Under a mixed economy, such as we have in the United States, businesses make decisions about which goods to produce or services to offer and how they are priced. Because there are many businesses making goods or providing services, customers can choose among a wide array of products. The competition for sales among businesses is a vital part of our economic system. Economists have identified four types of competition—perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly. We’ll introduce the first of these—perfect competition—in this section and cover the remaining three in the following section.


    1.4: Perfect Competition and Supply and Demand is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.