Supply in economics

Market structure and the supply curve

There is no such thing as a monopoly supply curve.^[21] Perfect competition is the only market structure for which a supply function can be derived. In a perfectly competitive market the price is given by the marketplace from the point of view of the supplier; a manager of a competitive firm can state what quantity of goods will be supplied for any price by simply referring to the firm's marginal cost curve. To generate his supply function the seller could simply initially hypothetically set the price equal to zero and then incrementally increase the price; at each price he could calculate the hypothetical quantity supplied using the marginal cost curve. Following this process the manager could trace out the complete supply function. A monopolist cannot replicate this process because price is not imposed by the marketplace and hence is not an independent variable from the point of view of the firm; instead, the firm simultaneously chooses both the price and the quantity subject to the stipulation that together they form a point on the customers' demand curve. A change in demand can result in "changes in price with no changes in output, changes in output with no changes in price or both".^[21] There is simply not a one-to-one relationship between price and quantity supplied.^[22] There is no single function that relates price to quantity supplied.