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Category
Supply and demand
Summary
In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good, or other traded item such as labor or liquid financial assets, will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded (at the current price) will equal the quantity supplied (at the current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity transacted. The concept of supply and demand forms the theoretical basis of modern economics.
In macroeconomics, as well, the aggregate demand-aggregate supply model has been used to depict how the quantity of total output and the aggregate price level may be determined in equilibrium.
A supply schedule, depicted graphically as a supply curve, is a table that shows the relationship between the price of a good and the quantity supplied by producers. Under the assumption of perfect competition, supply is determined by marginal cost: firms will produce additional output as long as the cost of producing an extra unit is less than the market price they receive.
A rise in the cost of raw materials would decrease supply, shifting the supply curve to the left because at each possible price a smaller quantity would be supplied. One may also think of this as a shift up in the supply curve, because the price must rise for producers to supply a given quantity. A fall in production costs would increase supply, shifting the supply curve to the right and down.
Mathematically, a supply curve is represented by a supply function, giving the quantity supplied as a function of its price and as many other variables as desired to better explain quantity supplied. The two most common specifications are:
- linear supply function, e.g., the slanted line and
- the constant-elasticity supply function (also called isoelastic or log-log or loglinear supply function), e.g., the smooth curve which can be rewritten as By its very nature, the concept of a supply curve assumes that firms are perfect competitors, having no influence over the market price.
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