Supply and demand

Because of their importance to the development of economic theory, an appreciation of the significance of the concepts of supply and demand is essential to the understanding of much of the subject-matter of economics. This article seeks to explain their significance in non-technical terms, as well as introducing the lay reader to some of the associated terminology used by economists and providing a simple introduction to the concepts for students of economics.

Definitions of the terms used in the article that are shown in italics can be found on the Related Articles subpage, and a selection of the diagrams and mathematical equations that are conventionally used for teaching purposes can be found on the Tutorials subpage

Overview: origins and applications

The proposition that prices are determined by supply and demand is so familiar that it seems like a statement of the obvious. In fact, it was not generally known, even to eminent intellectuals such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and David Ricardo, until the idea was popularised by Alfred Marshal towards the end of the nineteenth century . Since then it has become universally accepted that demand rises in response to a reduction in price, that supply rises in response to an increase in price, and that price somehow settles to a level where demand is equal to supply. That proposition has come to be been termed "the law of supply and demand" and is often thought to be as firmly established as the law of gravity. In fact it is what Marshall termed "a statement of a tendency", depending upon particular premises about human behaviour, and falling short of a complete explanation of the market mechanism. It has nevertheless survived in general use as a robust statement that reflects widespread experience. In economics, it has served as a tool that has been used in the construction of other theories, and it has generated a terminology that has been widely used in discussions among economists.

Demand

Price effects

The basic premise that economists adopt when discussing demand was stated by Marshall as the proposition that "the larger the amount of a thing that a person has, the less ... will be the price which he will pay for a little more of it" - a proposition that they referred to as the "law of diminishing marginal utility". That premise has detailed implications for the price/demand relationship that are discussed on the Tutorials subpage, but the only implication that is necessary to the operation of the law of supply and demand is that demand rises in response to a reduction in price and vice versa. Among exceptions to this generally-observed behaviour are goods that people prize just because they are expensive - sometimes referred to as Veblen goods in reference to the economist who coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption". An increase (or decrease) in the price charged for a product usually has two effects: - one is to cause consumers to switch their buying from (or to) it, to (or from) other products; and the other is to bring about a reduction (or increase) in consumers' incomes with the consequences described in the following paragraph. Those two consequences of a price change are termed the substitution effect and the income effect. (In this context "substitution" refers to a switch to or from any other product. The particular effects of substitutes that serve as functional alternatives are described in a later paragraph). From a supplier's viewpoint, however, the relevant characteristic of the relationship between price and demand is the percentage increase of demand for a product that would result from a small percentage reduction in its existing price - a quantity known as the price elasticity of demand for the product.

Income effects

The missing passage in the above quotation from Marshall's Principles of Economics was his "other things being equal" qualification; and income is one of the other things that have to be taken into account. The effect of a rise in a community's income must obviously be a proportionately equal increase in its total spending, assuming no change in the proportion that it saves. That implies a community-wide income elasticity of demand of exactly one - but, within that average, different values pertain to different categories of product. It is common experience for example, that people spend a diminishing proportion on food as their incomes rise (an observation that is sometimes referred to as "Engel's Law"). There are circumstances in which Engel's law can have significant consequences. In international trade, its effect is a continuing deterioration in the terms of trade of food-exporting countries with every rise in the prosperity of their customer countries; and in some developing countries the income effect referred to in the previous paragraph can produce an exception to the law of supply and demand that is similar to that of Veblen goods, but for a different reason. In markets predominated by people whose income is spent mainly on a basic good such as rice, the income effect of a reduction in its price can lead them to spend less upon it, thus reversing the normal effect of a price reduction. (Goods to which this exception applies are termed Giffen goods). Corresponding to Engel's law at the other end of the spectrum, the income elasticity of demand of luxury goods such as sports cars and jewelery is usually well above one.

Demand with substitutes and complements

The demand for a product is reduced if a new substitute becomes available - as happened to CDs when DVDs became available - and is increased if the price of an existing substitute is increased. The converse applies to complementary goods, so that the demand for microwave ovens is increased by the introduction of improved microwaveable meals, and the demand for cars is reduced if the price of petrol is increased. The sensitivity of the demand for a product to a change in the price of a substitute or a complement is referred to as the cross elasticity of demand between the products, and is positive for substitutes and negative for complementary goods. However, in estimating the net effect upon demand of any price change, allowance has also to be taken of its effect upon consumers' incomes.

Supply

Diminishing returns

The inferences of economic theory concerning the determination of supply relationships are less well established than those concerning demand, and they have been the subject of the controversy that is summarised on the tutorials subpage. The consensus view is that the premise that an increase in the price of a product results in an increase in its supply is justified by the law of diminishing returns.

Supply with substitutes and complements

Supply is also affected by the prices of substitutes and complements in the markets for the inputs used in production. Where nurses are used as substitutes for doctors, an increase in the pay of doctors would increase the demand for nurses, but where doctors and nurses perform complementary functions, it would reduce the demand for nurses. However, the concept of cross-elasticity has less currency in this context than in connection with demand.

Market interactions

The Auctioneer analogy

The original theory of supply and demand offered no explanation of the actual mechanism that achieves the postulated equality between demand and supply, but a possible explanation was put forward by Marshall's French contemporary, Léon Walras. Walras described a market in which an imaginary auctioneer invites offers to sell and offers to buy at an arbitrary starting price, and then announces a succession of price revisions that bring the amounts offered by buyers and sellers progressively closer together until equality is reached - and allows no transactions to take place until that price is established . Similar arrangements (termed "French auctions") are, in fact, used to set opening prices in some stock markets, but the Walrassian auction was intended - and is widely accepted - as an analogy to be applied to markets in general.