In a perfectly competitive market, an individual firm has the market power to set its selling price above the prevailing market equilibrium price without losing all of its buyers.
Answer: Answer
Answer
False. An individual firm operating under perfect competition is a price taker and cannot charge a price above the market price without losing all its sales to competitors.
The statement is false because one of the fundamental assumptions of perfect competition is that individual firms are price takers. Because the product is homogeneous and consumers have perfect knowledge of the market, any firm attempting to charge a price higher than the established market equilibrium will immediately lose all its customers to other producers selling at the market price.
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Key Concept
Price-Taker Assumption in Perfect Competition