Suppose you manage a local grocery store, and you learn that a very popular national grocery chain is about to open a store just a few miles away. Use the model of monopolistic competition to analyze the impact of this new store on the quantity of output your store should produce (Q) and the price your store should charge (P). What will happen to your profits? Explain your reasoning in detail. How and why do profits change? What could you do to defend your market share against the new store?

Why is monopolistic competition the most common market structure?

Monopolistic competition creates inefficiency because of the markups and excess capacity. The graph below depicts the situation for a hypothetical monopolistically competitive firm. The curves included in the graph are demand (D), marginal revenue (MR), average total cost (ATC), and marginal cost (MC). The graph is not graded, but you can move the point labeled P to help you find the numeric values to answer the questions. Price $ 80 MC M 45 P D ATC Quantity What is the size of the markup on the price? Number $0 What is the size of the excess capacity? Number Units

What is the relationship between product differentiation and monopolistic competition?

Give an example of a market that has monopolistic competition and explain how the example you have chosen exhibits competitive aspects and how it also exhibits monopolistic aspects.

Assume the figure on the right shows the cost structure for a monopolistically competitive firm selling a particular brand of shoes. MC is the marginal cost curve and AC is the average cost curve. If this firm produces 2 thousand pairs of shoes, does it minimize average cost? How much more would they need to produce to reach minimum average cost? The firm needs to produce an additional thousand pairs of shoes to reach minimum average cost. (Enter your response as an integer.) SEED Price (dollars per pair) 80- 72- 64- 56- 48- 40- 32- 24- 16- 8- 0- 0 1 Quantity (in thousands) MC AG 10 Q 20

Suppose the figure to the right represents the market for a particular brand of shampoo, such as L'Oreal, Lancome, or Maybelline. Assume the market is monopolistically competitive and is in long-run equilibrium. How much excess capacity does the firm have? The monopolistically competitive firm's excess capacity is thousand bottles of shampoo. (Enter your response as an integer.) C Price and cost (per bottle) 2.00- Q 1.80- MC Q ATC 1.60- 1.40- 1.20- 1.00- 0.80- 0.60- 0.40- 0.20- 0.00+ 0 2 MR D 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Quantity (shampoo bottles in thousands)

Q2: You have a small decoration business primarily making custom paper mache pinata's. Monopolistic Competition. Each customer has unique custom order, therefore it is very difficult to figure out the marginal cost of each output. You charge a price of $15 for any small two foot by two foot pinata's. Without marginal cost, how can you check to see if the small pinata's were profitable?