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Unpublished Paper
Living Supply and Demand Curves
(2019)
  • Ted C Bergstrom
  • Emanuel Vespa
Abstract
This paper describes a classroom experiment in which students form "living supply and demand curves" with
heights of demanders representing willingness to pay and heights of suppliers representing cost of production for a single unit of a good.
We conduct exercises in which we act out a method that maximizes total profits. We also act out an algorithm that selects the largest number of pairs who can trade profitably and show that maximizing the number of profitable transactions does not in general maximize total profits.
Keywords
  • supply and demand,
  • economics teaching
Publication Date
September 3, 2019
Citation Information
Ted C Bergstrom and Emanuel Vespa. "Living Supply and Demand Curves" (2019)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ted_bergstrom/132/