Michael Weiss is a columnist for Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, and NOW Lebanon. He is also a fellow at the Institute of Modern Russia where he is the editor-in-chief of The Interpreter, an online news and translation journal covering Russian foreign policy and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Perfectly competitive firms are small in size in relation to the market size â and none of these firms control the market. A monopolist firm, on the other hand, is larger and controls the entire market for its industry. Monopolistic firms are price makers by virtue of their market control.
Monopolies are unique relative to other market structures, as it only contains one firm, and thus a monopoly firm has far more power to set prices than firms in other market structures. Because of this lack of competition, monopoly firms will make an economic profit. 2  This would normally cause other firms to enter the market. 3  For this market to remain a monopolistic one, there must be some barrier to entry.