Shifts in Supply

Note: D indicates demand curve; P, price; Q, quantity; S, supply curve. Note: D indicates demand curve; P, price; Q, quantity; S, supply curve. 3.6.1 Prices of Inputs

in the amount of money consumers are willing and able to pay for a supply of goods at the current price, will, through causing a larger or a smaller supply to be produced, alter the methods of production, the positive and relative amounts of the various factors of production, and the prices that are paid per unit for their use, so raising and lowering the margins of employment, extensive and intensive, of each factor. Still more important are the influences which the rise or fall of demand prices for staple materials of manufacture exert upon the structure of whole groups of trades, and so upon the supply prices of the goods they make. The rise of demand prices for such articles as copper, rubber, oil, paper, leather, due to new or increased demands for electric apparatus, motors, cheap literature, &c., have altered the economic and even the political administration of whole provinces. § 6.—The elasticity of supply, i.e. the response which expenses of production make to a rise or a fall of demand at previous prices, is much less calculable than the elasticity of demand. For, whereas the latter commonly depends upon the gradual action of large bodies of consumers altering their habits of consumption, the former is usually achieved by quick changes in methods of production spreading rapidly over whole trades of producers. Production is normally less conservative than consumption, and is more alert to seize and adopt new economies. For though habits of industry make for themselves deep grooves, and labour, capital, and ability, being specialised in certain methods, resist innovations which, however beneficial in the long run, involve present trouble and loss, competition forces reforms