Skip to main content

Finding the market equilibrium price and quantity

Finding the equilibrium price and quantity is perhaps one of the most common problems in an introduction to Microeconomics course, which is exactly what we are going to do in this post!

Consider the following problem, you are tasked with finding the equilibrium price and quantity for a particular good X. 

You are told that the producers are willing and able to sell 2 units for the  price of 16 U.S dollars a unit, and if the price increases, they are able to make 10 units for a price of 20 U.S dollars per unit. Assuming that the supply curve is linear, then it can be modeled by the following equation:

 
The same process can be used to determine the market demand (assuming linearity and that we are given information about the market demand schedule). At a price of 30 U.S dollars consumers are willing to buy 10 units, if the price decreases to 12 U.S dollars, consumers want to buy 20 units. Thus the demand curve corresponds to this equation:

Finally, all we need to do is to set both equations equal to one another and solve for P. Remember, the equilibrium price and quantity are determined by the intersection of the demand and supply curves (note that in the equation below P=Pe).


Now that we have the equilibrium price, we can plug this result in any of our two previous equations representing the market demand and supply curves and solve for Q. They should both  give the quantity demanded when the market is in equilibrium. This is also a nice way to double check your work (i.e if you get two totally different results you probably made a mistake somewhere).

 
Let's visualize that:



In a more realistic fashion, we would say that the market clearing price is 20.91 U.S dollars and the quantity of goods provided is 12 units. It would not make much sense to buy 11 units plus 82% of one good, so we can round that number to 12.

Source: example inspired from Zeder,Raphael.How to Calculate the Equilibrium Price. Quickonomics (2018). 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Macroeconomics: balance of payments accounts

Balance of payment is the sum of three separate accounts and must always be equal to 0 (given no statistical error): Current account: the net flow of funds exchanged for goods and services, and monetary gifts  that flow in and out of a country. This is often used as an indicator for net export. Financial account: also known as the capital account, is the net flow of funds for investment in real assets (direct investments) or financial assets (stocks or bonds) into a nation. Official reserves: in order to balance the two accounts above, a country must have a reserve of foreign money. It measures the net effect of all money flows from the other accounts. If the current account is positive, it must be the case that the sum of the financial account and official reserves is negative. Current account (CA) components: Balance of trade in goods: spending by consumers and firms on imported and exported goods. Exported goods have a positive effect on the current account, whereas importe...

Macroeconomics: equilibrium in the AD/AS model

Real output and price level in the AD/AS model: The short run equilibrium in the AD/AS model, is when the  intersection between the short run aggregate supply curve and the aggregate demand curve determines the level of output and price level.          This short equilibrium output can be compared to the full-employment (i.e long run equilibrium) output by adding the long run aggregate supply curve in the graph.  If the difference between the short run equilibrium output and full employment output is negative than we have a recessionary gap. This could be caused by a decrease in households' consumption, a fall in private investments, or a decrease in government spending. If the difference is positive, we have an inflationary gap, where the short run equilibrium output is bigger than its full employment output. This can be caused by an increase in households expenditures, expansionary fiscal policy, etc... If the gap is zero, this means that t...

Microeconomics: Firms and cost in the short run

In Economics, the term short run refers to a time period where at least one variable of interest does not change . In our case, the short run for a firm is when at least one input  (labor, land, capital) stays fixed. Usually land and capital are considered fixed in the short run.  If an input is fixed during a period time, no matter how much the total product a firm produces, its cost stays the same. This cost is commonly known as fixed cost (FC). Examples of fixed costs: rent, property taxes, loan payments. Labor is often considered to be a part of the  variable cost (VC) . Variable cost can be defined as the cost a firm has control over during the short run. Unlike fixed cost, variable cost increases (decreases) as a firm's total product increases (decreases). Examples of variable costs include: utility bills, wages, raw materials A firm's total cost (TC) is the sum of its variable and fixed costs. As you can see, the fixed cost...