Cartel - a group of firms colluding together
Collusion - when firms work together to set prices above market rates
Dominant Strategy - when a firm would make the same choice regardless of what its competitor does
Excess Capacity - when a firm produces less than the quantity where ATC is minimized
Fair-Return Level - the price at which Demand = ATC
Imperfect Competition - all market structures that are not perfectly competitive
Market Share - the percent of sales in a market made by a particular company
Monopolistic Competition - a market with many sellers, low barriers to entry, and the ability to differentiate
Monopoly - a market with a single dominant firm and high barriers to entry
Nash Equilibrium - a spot on the payoff matrix where no firm would benefit from changing its decision
Natural Monopoly - a monopolistic firm with an ATC curve that is downward sloping all the way to the demand curve
Non-Price Competition - trying to increase sales by doing things other than change your price (e.g. advertising)
Oligopoly - a market with a few powerful firms and high barriers to entry
Payoff Matrix - a chart showing the outcomes of decisions by multiple firms
Perfect Competition - a market structure with many, small firms selling identical products and low barriers to entry
Perfect Price Discrimination - charging different each customer exactly the most they are willing to pay
Price Discrimination - charging different customers different prices based on their willingness or ability to pay
Price-maker - a firm that can choose what price to sell at due to having a downward-sloping firm-level demand curve
Regulation - rules made by the government to control the behavior of companies or people
Socially Optimal Quantity - the quantity produced that would maximize total consumer and producer surplus