Talk:Supply and demand

A fresh start

I am inclined to believe that this is all that need be said in this article, given that the reader can learn more by following either of the two links.

It may come as a surprise that I have not used the familiar intersecting curves to illustrate the concepts. I suspect that graphical reasoning is helpful only to those who have a grounding in the physical sciences, and that others find it off-putting. In any case, I do not think that in this case it adds anything that cannot be conveyed by simple verbal logic.

Nick Gardner 05:21, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Nick - If this article is about the law of supply and demand, then I'd agree that it's developed, though not complete - there should be a discussion about apparent violations of the law of supply and demand, more discussion of elasticity, and the effects of taxes and rationing on the equilibrium. However, if the article is about supply and demand, then there needs to be significantly more added to it, to explain supply, to explain demand, to explain substitution effects, explain time lag effects, etc., as well as those issues which I listed above. Anthony Argyriou 12:32, 25 October 2007 (CDT)

Anthony - I have inserted links to articles on the topics to which you refer - preferring to keep this article easy to read for those who do not need elaboration, while serving as a gateway to other articles for those who do. I should be content to see the title changed to The Law of Supply and Demand.

I have also deleted an inserted paragraph that suggested that the concepts concerned are valid only when a range of assumptions are satisfied - and I have added a final paragraph to refer to cases of zero and negative elasticity.

I intend to place the usual graph on the tutorials page Nick Gardner 05:48, 18 January 2008 (CST)

Nick Gardner 09:51, 5 January 2008 (CST)

graphs inputted, will be adding basic monopoly SD graph. anything else?

Charlie Schaezlein 05:19, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Charlie (if I may) Excellent! You have saved me a lot of trouble and done it better than I would have - and greatly improved the article. I will add links from the main page shortly. It would be great if you could also put your monopoly graph on the tutorials page of the Competition article. Nick Gardner 17:06, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

I do not understand the inserted sentence Only in some exceptional circumstances (described in the tutorials subpage) can equilibrium not be reached.. If it is a reference to the "cobweb theorem" it deserves further explanation (there is none on the tutorials subpage). But I am inclined to think that that remotely theoretical construction is a needless complication. If I get no objections, I propose to delete the sentence. Nick Gardner 05:42, 31 March 2008 (CDT)

Perfect information, etc.

As far as I understand, the typical assumption in the law of supply and demand is that buyers and sellers have perfect information i.e. the buyers know what prices different sellers are offering goods at. But I've also heard that there have been studies which have shown that the law of supply and demand works even in a non-perfect setting was first demonstrated through classroom experiments by Vernon Smith. Should this be mentioned in the article? Vipul Naik 15:09, 13 April 2008 (CDT)