(2) Perfect competition Explanation: In perfect competition, the existence of a large number of firms producing and selling the product ensures that an individual firm exercises no influence over the price of the product. The output of an individual firm constitutes a very small fraction of the total output of the whole industry so that any increase or decrease in output by an individual firm has a negligible effect on the total supply of product of the industry. As a result, a single firm is not in a position to influence the price of the product by the increasing or reducing its output.