Supply - Part 2

In order to supply a product, a combination of land, labor, capital, and entreprenurs must come together. This combination between the factors of production and the output of goods and services is addressed by the theory of production.

The theory of production is usually divided into periods known as the short run and long run. In the short run, it is assumed that this period allows only the change in the variable known as labor, while the long run allows producers to change quantities of all of their resources (building new factories, producing new product lines, large-scale retraining, etc.). Read more

Supply - Part 1

While demand looks at the consumer and their willingness and ability to purchase an item, supply looks at the producer. Supply is based on the voluntary decisions made by producers as to the amount of an item to offer for sale at any given price. Supply is defined as the amount of a product that would be offered at for sale at all possible prices that could prevail in the market.

The Law of Supply has a direct relationship between quantity and price, unlike the Law of Demand which has an inverse relationship. The Law of Supply states that the higher the price, the more supply will be offered and the lower the price, the less the amount of supply that will be offered. This should not be surprising, it is a simple matter of profit seeking. Read more

Tables & Frames - Part 1

Both tables and frames provide the ability to organize not only information on your Web pages, they can also be used to layout your entire Web page. Today we’ll look at a few of the basic HTML tags necessary to create tables.

To begin a table, we use the <table> tag. This tells the browser that we are starting a table. When the table is finished, we close the tag like so, </table>. Read more

9.7 Trillion and Counting

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress just passed, brings the amount of money spent on bailout programs to more than 9.7 trillion dollars. This figure is enough to pay off more than 90% of the U.S. home mortgages. Where is it going and how can we afford to pay off our Federal deficit?

With the debt at $10,772,378,548,982.35 (each person’s share is about $35,083.39) and several more trillions of dollars being added by the current financial crisis, when does it stop? How does it impact our standing in the world? Is the U.S. in danger of collapse? What might happen if the U.S. declares bankruptcy? Is China a threat?

These questions dominated class today and many of them did not come with ready made answers. It’s true that China is somewhat linked to the U.S. financial locomotive, however, because of their size and ability over time to create new partnerships with other countries, they are still going to be a growing, competitive and dominant world power.

Objectives:

• Analyze the elasticity of demand for a product
• Understand the factors that determine demand elasticity

Homework: Study for tomorrow’s chapter 4 quiz.

Demand - Curve & Diminishing Returns

Demand is often represented as the desire to have or own a certain item. Using this definition, anyone who would like to own a car could be said to demand one. In order for demand to be counted in the marketplace, however, the mere desire for a product is not enough.  This desire must coincide with the ability and willingness to pay. Only people that meet this criteria can be said to truly have demand. It is these individuals who will compete with others that have similar demands for the available products.

To illustrate demand we have two tools, the demand schedule and demand curve. The demand schedule is T-chart that shows quantity demanded at a given price. The demand curve uses the values provided by the the demand schedule to create a chart plotting the quantity demanded versus the price. While gathering precise data isn’t always easy, these tools provide a powerful method of analyzing the type of consumer demand for a product. Read more

Forms - Lists & Menus

Lists are scrollable boxes from which a user can choose multiple items. This can be useful when there’s a long list of choices and you want to save space on your Web page. Using checkboxes for a large number of items is not very user friendly. Using a list allows you to contain the items within a small box and still give the user full access to all of the choices through a scroll bar. You can also choose to have any one of the items in your list as the selected item when a form is loaded into the user’s browser. To do this, add the the selected attribute to the option you want selected.

< select name=”cars” size=”4″>
<option value=”audi”>Audi</option>
<option value=”dodge”>Dodge</option>
<option value=”toyota” selected>Toyota</option>
<option value=”vw”>Volkswagen</option>
</select>

A menu or a drop-down menu, is a drop-down box from which a user can choose only one item. When an item from a drop-down box is selected, the box disappears while displaying your selection. Read more