197 Glossary: Monopoly (161/160) -- Microeconomics

197 Glossary: Monopoly - allocative efficiency - producing the optimal quantity of some output; the quantity where the marginal benefit to society of one more unit just equals the marginal cost - barriers to entry - the legal, technological, or market forces that may discourage or prevent potential competitors from entering a market - copyright - a form of legal protection to prevent copying, for commercial purposes, original works of authorship, including books and music - deregulation - removing government controls over setting prices and quantities in certain industries - intellectual property - the body of law including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secret law that protect the right of inventors to produce and sell their inventions - legal monopoly - legal prohibitions against competition, such as regulated monopolies and intellectual property protection - marginal profit - profit of one more unit of output, computed as marginal revenue minus marginal cost - monopoly - a situation in which one firm produces all of the output in a market - natural monopoly - economic conditions in the industry, for example, economies of scale or control of a critical resource, that limit effective competition - patent - a government rule that gives the inventor the exclusive legal right to make, use, or sell the invention for a limited time - predatory pricing - when an existing firm uses sharp but temporary price cuts to discourage new competition - trade secrets - methods of production kept secret by the producing firm - trademark - an identifying symbol or name for a particular good and can only be used by the firm that registered that trademark