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SCARCITY: A pervasive condition of human existence that exists because society has unlimited wants and needs, but limited resources used for their satisfaction. In other words, while we all want a bunch of stuff, we can't have everything that we want. In slightly different words, this scarcity problem means: (1) that there's never enough resources to produce everything that everyone would like produced; (2) that some people will have to do without some of the stuff that they want or need; (3) that doing one thing, producing one good, performing one activity, forces society to give up something else; and (4) that the same resources can not be used to produce two different goods at the same time. We live in a big, bad world of scarcity. This big, bad world of scarcity is what the study of economics is all about. That's why we usually subtitle scarcity: THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM.
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                           TOTAL REVENUE CURVE, MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION: A curve that graphically represents the relation between the total revenue received by a monopolistically competitive firm for selling its output and the quantity of output sold. It is combined with the total cost curve to determine economic profit and the profit maximizing level of production. The slope of the total revenue curve is marginal revenue. Monopolistic competition is a market structure with a large number of relatively small firms that sell similar but not identical products. Each firm is small relative to the overall size of the market such that it has some market control, but not much. In other words, it can sell a wide range of output at a narrow range of prices. This translates into a relatively elastic demand curve. If a monopolistically competitive firm wants to sell a larger quantity, then it must lower the price.The total revenue curve reflects the degree of market control held by a firm. For a perfectly competitive firm with no market control, the total revenue curve is a straight line. For firms with more market control, such as monopolistic competition, the slope of the total revenue curve flattens at larger quantities. The slope of this total revenue curve is marginal revenue. Total Revenue Curve,
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The total revenue curve for Manny Mustard's House of Sandwich is displayed in the exhibit to the right. Key to this curve is that Manny Mustard is a monopolistically competitive provider of Deluxe Club Sandwiches and thus faces a negatively-sloped demand curve. Larger quantities of output are only possible with lower prices.The vertical axis measures total revenue and the horizontal axis measures the quantity of output (number of sandwiches). Although quantity on this particular graph stops at 10 sandwiches of medicine, it could go higher. This curve indicates that if Manny Mustard's House of Sandwich sells 1 sandwich (at $5.25 per sandwich), then it receives $5.25 of total revenue. Alternatively, if it sells 10 sandwiches (at $4.75 per sandwich), then it receives $47.50 of total revenue. While the curvature is slight, the total revenue curve for monopolistic competition is not a straight line. While the curvature is slight, the total revenue curve for monopolistic competition is not a straight line. For Manny Mustard the total revenue curve has a slightly flatter slope as more output is produced. The changing slope of this curve is due to the changing price.
Recommended Citation:TOTAL REVENUE CURVE, MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION, AmosWEB Encyclonomic WEB*pedia, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: November 10, 2025].
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Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time at a garage sale trying to buy either a replacement washer for your kitchen faucet or a stretchable, flexible watch band. Be on the lookout for jovial bank tellers.
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MU
Marginal Utility
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