Week 3 · Readings & resources

Week 3 — Readings & Resources

Principles of Microeconomics Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 3 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 54–61 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–22 min total)

① What buyers want at each price

Chapter 3, Section “State the law: higher price, smaller amount wanted” · Session 1, Segment 1, “The law of demand” · Remember: a higher own price lowers the quantity buyers want, with everything else held fixed.

Demand - Economic Lowdown — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — a short explainer that defines demand as willingness and ability to buy at every price, states the law of demand, and then walks through what moves the whole curve, using chocolate as its running example. Listen for the moment it separates a change in quantity demanded from a change in demand. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
Demand and Inverse Demand Function — Think Econ — a step-by-step rearrangement of one demand rule: it starts with quantity demanded written in terms of price, 240 minus 5 times the price, and solves for price instead, which gives 48 minus 0.2 times the quantity, the inverse demand function. It then points out that the line economists draw, with price on the vertical axis, is the inverse form, while the algebra usually starts from the original form, and that both are the same rule rearranged. The chapter's Desmos line for the running market is written in that inverse form, so try running the steps backward on it. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)

② Slide along the curve, or shift it?

Chapter 3, Section “Move along the curve: a change in quantity demanded” · Session 1, Segment 5, “A movement along the curve” · Remember: only the good's own price moves buyers along the curve; anything else moves the curve.

Change in Quantity Demanded vs Change in Demand — Economics Mafia — a three-minute animation about apples: a price cut from 2 dollars to 1.50 dollars slides one dot down the same demand curve, a change in quantity demanded, and then a health advert makes buyers want more apples at every price, so the whole curve shifts right, an increase in demand. Its prices are the video's own, not the chapter's market. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
A Simple Activity to Explain a Change in Demand versus a Change in Quantity Demanded — Foundation for Teaching Economics — a teaching foundation's short article, written for instructors, that describes a live drink auction in which students stand or sit as the price rises; read it to picture the law of demand happening in a room, then read its list of what shifts demand. This builds on Week 1's habit of holding everything else fixed, ceteris paribus. (reading, 6–8 min)

③ What moves the whole curve

Chapter 3, Section “Sort the determinants of demand” · Session 2, Segment 7, “The determinants of demand” · Remember: income, related goods' prices, tastes, expectations, and the number of buyers shift demand, and each one has a direction.

The 5 Demand Shift Factors: Change in Demand vs Change in Quantity Demanded — Think Econ — an animated tour of five shift factors, with two colas as substitutes, printers and ink as complements, and a gasoline price expected to rise as the expectations case. Pause after each factor and say which way the curve moves before the video does. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
Population Growth Holds Steady in Midsized Cities Amid Widespread Slowdown — U.S. Census Bureau — the agency's release on which cities gained the most residents in a recent year, led by fast-growing suburbs in Texas, while some of the largest cities lost people. Read it as the number-of-buyers determinant: a town that gains residents gains buyers for groceries, haircuts, and rentals at every price, so local demand shifts right, and a town that loses residents sees demand shift left. Skip the housing-unit figures near the end. Stop here before supply and the market price; next week takes that up. (reading, 5–7 min)
Food Spending as a Share of Income Declines as Income Rises — USDA Economic Research Service — a one-chart page comparing households by income: higher-income households spend more dollars on food than lower-income ones, even though food takes a smaller share of their income. Read the dollar amounts as the income determinant at work, with food behaving like a normal good; the falling share is a different measure and does not make food an inferior good. Use it while working through the Week-3 module overview. (reading, 2–3 min)

④ Adding buyers into a market

Chapter 3, Section “Add up the buyers: market demand” · Session 1, Segment 4, “Market demand” · Remember: hold one price fixed, then add every buyer's quantity at that price.

Market Demand Curve. How do we sum individual demand curves? — Economics Mafia — two buyers' apple schedules are added at each price, and then their two demand curves are added sideways, the horizontal summation the chapter calls adding up the buyers; it closes by shifting one buyer's demand right after an income rise, which shifts the market curve right too. Its numbers are the video's own; follow the method. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
How to Derive Market Demand from Individual Consumers' Demand — Economics in Many Lessons — three worked cases: two identical buyers, a large group of identical buyers, and two different buyers where one stops buying above a certain price. The second case is the same idea as reading the chapter's market as ten identical buyers. At one point it calls the total "aggregate demand"; in this course the total for one good is market demand. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Demand — Concise Encyclopedia of Economics — a signed reference entry on demand: read the opening on what demand means, the law of demand and its everyday examples, and the closing paragraphs on income and related goods, and skip the middle paragraphs on elasticity. (reading, 8–10 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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