24. How does the quantity produced and price charged by a monopolist compare to that of a perfectly

competitive firm?

Critical Thinking Questions

25. ALCOA does not have the monopoly power it once had. How do you suppose their barriers to entry were

weakened?

26. Why are generic pharmaceuticals significantly cheaper than name brand ones?

27. For many years, the Justice Department has tried to break up large firms like IBM, Microsoft, and most

recently Google, on the grounds that their large market share made them essentially monopolies. In a

global market, where U.S. firms compete with firms from other countries, would this policy make the same

sense as it might in a purely domestic context?

28. Intellectual property laws are intended to promote innovation, but some economists, such as Milton

Friedman, have argued that such laws are not desirable. In the United States, there is no intellectual
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