第02章--需求、供给与均衡价格创新.ppt

* A good example here would be breakfast cereal, or nearly anything with readily available substitutes. An elastic demand curve is flatter than a unit elastic demand curve (which itself is flatter than an inelastic demand curve). * * The material on this slide is not used anywhere else in the textbook. Therefore, if you are pressed for time and looking for things to cut, you might consider cutting this slide. (Note that this is my personal recommendation and is not necessarily the official position of Greg Mankiw or Cengage/South-Western.) Due to space limitations, this slide uses “E” as an abbreviation for elasticity, or more specifically, the price elasticity of demand, and the slide omits the analysis of revenue along the demand curve. Calculations of percentage changes use the midpoint method. (This is why the increase from Q=0 to Q=20 is 200% rather than infinity.) As you move down a linear demand curve, the slope (the ratio of the absolute change in P to that in Q) remains constant: From the point (0, $30) to the point (20, $20), the “rise” equals -$10, the “run” equals +20, so the slope equals -1/2 or -0.5. From the point (40, $10) to the point (60, $0), the “rise” again equals -$10, the “run” equals +20, and the slope again equals -0.5. However, the percentage changes in these variables do not remain constant, as shown by the different colored elasticity calculations that appear on the slide. The lesson here is that elasticity falls as you move downward rightward along a linear demand curve. * In essence, the textbook says “Here are the determinants of elasticity. The first one is availability of close substitutes. Here’s an example….” That’s great for a textbook. For teaching, I’ve found a different approach to be far more effective: having students deduce the general lessons from specific examples they can figure out using common sense. This is the approach on the next few slides. Also, see notes on the next slide