Week 4 · Readings & resources

Week 4 — Readings & Resources

Principles of Microeconomics Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 4 (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 58–66 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 (19–21 min total)

① What sellers offer, and what shifts it

Chapter 4, Section “Shift the supply curve: the determinants” · Session 1, Segment 4, “Shifting the supply curve” · Remember: only the good's own price moves sellers along the supply curve; input prices, technology, and the other determinants move the whole curve.

Supply - Economic Lowdown — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — a short explainer that defines supply, states the law of supply with a widget maker, draws the upward-sloping curve, and then shifts it right for cheaper production technology and left for a rise in the price of copper, an input. Near the end it says "a shift along the curve" once; in this course that is a movement along the curve, a change in quantity supplied. This builds on Week 3's work with demand: the same split between a movement and a shift, now on the sellers' side. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
The 5 Supply Shift Factors: Change in Supply vs Change in Quantity Supplied — Think Econ — an animated tour of what shifts supply: input prices, the prices of related goods in production, technology, producers' expectations, and the number of firms, with a third bakery opening as its last example. Pause after each factor and say which way the curve moves before the video does. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
Hurricane Harvey Caused U.S. Gulf Coast Refinery Runs to Drop, Gasoline Prices to Rise — U.S. Energy Information Administration — a short agency analysis of how a 2017 hurricane shut or slowed refineries along the Gulf Coast and briefly cut pipeline deliveries. Read it as a supply curve shifting left: name the determinant, the direction, and what happened to the price buyers paid. Use it while working through the Week-4 module overview. (reading, 4–6 min)

② Where the two curves cross

Chapter 4, Section “Put the blades together: market equilibrium” · Session 1, Segment 5, “Putting the blades together” · Remember: the equilibrium price is the one price where the amount buyers want equals the amount sellers offer.

Equilibrium - Economic Lowdown — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — reviews the laws of demand and supply, then puts the two curves together as the two blades of a pair of scissors and names the crossing as market equilibrium. Its marble-in-a-bowl picture shows why a surplus pushes the price down and a shortage pushes it up. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
How to Calculate Market Equilibrium (No Graphing) — Think Econ — sets a demand rule equal to a supply rule, solves for the price, and then checks that both rules give the same quantity, labelling the answers P-star and Q-star. Its numbers are the video's own; follow the steps, which match the chapter's method for solving Qd = Qs. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
Supply and Demand: Crash Course Economics #4 — CrashCourse — two hosts use a market for strawberries to show a surplus at a high price, a shortage at a low one, and the single price where the two curves meet, then shift supply left for winter weather. A gasoline example moves both curves at once. The last minutes turn to whether some things should be sold in markets at all; that is a normative question, and the model alone cannot settle it. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)

③ When one curve moves, and when both do

Chapter 4, Section “Run comparative statics: which curve, which way, where it lands” · Session 2, Segment 7, “Comparative statics” · Remember: name the curve, name the direction, then find the new price and quantity, and when both curves move, say which result is open.

Shifting of Demand and Supply Curves (Part II) — Economics Mafia — an animated tour of every pairing of two shifts. When demand and supply both rise, quantity rises for certain while the price depends on which shift is bigger, and the video then runs the same three cases, a bigger demand shift, equal shifts, and a bigger supply shift, for each of the other pairings. Its equal-shifts case matches the chapter's double shift, where the price stays put. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
Egg Price Impacts of the 2014–15 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Outbreak — USDA Economic Research Service — a short agency article on how a bird-flu outbreak cut the number of egg-laying hens and how wholesale egg prices jumped as a result. Read it for the supply shift and the direction of the price. It explains the size of the jump with demand that barely responds to price; stop here before that idea, because next week takes up how strongly buyers respond. (reading, 4–6 min)
Why Is Candy So Expensive These Days? — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — an agency analysis of rising candy prices that traces them mainly to bad weather, disease, and shipping problems in the places that grow cocoa and sugar. Read the introduction and the section on cocoa's production collapse, and sort what you read into this week's moves: cocoa and sugar are inputs, so the supply of candy shifts left. Skip the charts of price indexes; the direction of each shift is what matters here. (reading, 8–10 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Supply — Concise Encyclopedia of Economics — a signed reference entry on supply: read the opening paragraphs on why quantity supplied rises with price and how markets find an equilibrium price, through the apartment-owners example, and skip the closing paragraphs on price controls and rent, which this course takes up later. (reading, 6–8 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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