Pricing Mechanisms
Economic theory suggests than in perfect competition, firms are “price-takers”, which means that they cannot – at least in the long run – set prices, but they rely on the prices set at the market (according to supply and demand of each good). So given the prices, the firms decide on the quantity they should produce in order to maximize profits.
Monopolists, in contrast to this, do set the prices of their goods in order to maximize profits, and as a result they produce less than the quantity they would have produced in a perfect competition scenario.
My new pants being weighted to determine the price
Well, that is theory… In my fabolous weekend in Bangalore I decided to go to buy some new pants, and there was a very innovative (for me) pricing mechanism: they just weighted the pants, and – just as fruits and vegetables in a supermarket – clothes have a price per lb. or Kg. Hence cotton pants, no matter the brand will cost roughly the same given they have the same size (they may differ in design which might affect their weight, but I guess not significantly).
Is this guy a monopolist, or a price taker? How does the “free market” set the price of pants by weight? Laptops and mobile phone seller firms will certainly not be profitable under this mechanism…
My name is Dany Bahar. I am currently an MPA/ID student at Harvard Kennedy School of Government (class of 2010), and an alumni of the MA in Economics program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem... 
I believe this truly explains why all Indians are skinny…
An interesting example I watched on TV was from Iraq, where the sellers in local markets weighed the cash money paid by the buyer. That was before the invasion.
I guess the market sets the price of the kilo, making this a change of units rather than of pricing system…
I wish this was true in the US. lol.
I have had the worse experince in using fixing and selling these systems