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3.6: Supply

  • Page ID
    210830
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    As with demand, supply is semi-exclusive club. To be considered a supplier of a good or service, you must meet two criteria:

    1. You have the ability (i.e., you possess the skills and capability)
    2. You have willingness (i.e., you want to supply it)

    Supply and Price Changes – Movement along the Supply Curve

    Of course, price is very important to a supplier. Higher prices mean higher revenue. However, there are many other determinants to supply. When, say, labor costs change, this has an impact on supply (even though other determinants, like prices, have not changed). We will focus our attention on how price changes affect supply. All the other determinants (e.g., taxes, factor costs, expectations, etc.) must be considered but held constant if we are to be certain that the change in supply was due solely to a price change. If both price and, let’s say, worker wages change then it would be difficult to say with certainty that a change in supply was due solely to a change in price.

    A graph with a line going upDescription automatically generated

    Figure 7

    Movements along the supply curve when prices change (↑price → ↑quantity supplied, ↓price → ↓quantity supplied) represents the law of supply. We describe a change in supply due to a movement along the supply curve (due to a price change) as a change in quantity supplied.

    Supply and other Determinants – Shifts of the Supply Curve

    What if prices remain the same and one of the other determinants of supply changes? Well, just as price changes affect supply, so do changes in the other determinants. We use the supply curve to show how changing determinants affect supply.

    Let’s say there is an increase in business taxes. What impact would this have on the supply for tutoring? We would expect that tutors would have less of an incentive to supply tutoring services at all price levels. We can show this by shifting the supply curve to the left.

    A graph of a graph showing the growth of a supply lineDescription automatically generated with medium confidence

    Figure 8

    We describe a change in demand due to a shift in the demand curve (caused by a change in a determinant of demand) as a change in overall demand.


    This page titled 3.6: Supply is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Martin Medeiros.

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