Which do you think a firm would prefer price setter or price taker?

Answer 1

They would prefer to be a price setter. This would imply control over the price. In some models this is a monopoly or an oligopoly. (As a side note, in the real world, EVERY firm has some control over the price of their good no matter how small that control may be, but this answer refers to models.) The technical reason for this is because in an economy in which firms are price takers, firms produce at the level where their Marginal Revenue equals Marginal Cost, but Marginal Revenue is set (it's the price. In a perfectly competitive economy it's also the minimum of the Average Variable Cost curve). So they can only vary their Marginal Cost by changing how much they produce. In a price setter economy, the price curve is changeable by the price setting. They will also produce where MR = MS, but they will produce a lesser quantity of goods because this artificial shortage will raise the price. This ALWAYS results in a higher profit than in a competitive economy.