PROFIT CURVE, MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION: A profit-maximizing monopolistically competitive firm produces output where economic profit is the greatest. A profit curve graphically represents the relation between economic profit earned by a monopolistically competitive firm and the quantity of output sold. The profit curve can be derived directly from a table of profit and output quantity numbers. However, it is frequently obtained from a graph of the total revenue and total cost curves. The nice thing about a profit curve is that it clearly illustrates the quantity of output which maximizes a firm's economic profit. See also | profit | profit curve | monopolistic competition | short-run production | firm | quantity | total revenue | total cost | profit maximization | production | marginal revenue | marginal cost |
