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In the last video, we introduced ourselves to the law of supply.
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And it was a fairly common sense idea
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that if we hold all else equal, that if the price of something
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goes up, there's more incentive for more producers
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to produce it or a given producer to produce more of it.
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And we saw that.
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As the price goes up, we moved along the supply curve,
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and the quantity produced went up.
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Now what I want to talk about in this video is all of the things
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we held equal in the last video.
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And the first of these, I'll call this the price of inputs,
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or another way to think about it is the cost of production.
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So if the price of inputs, maybe the price of labor,
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the people who would have to pick the grapes,
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or our fuel that we need to transport
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the grapes, or the land, if any of that increased,
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that at a given price point, we would make less money.
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There's less incentive for us to do it,
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especially if this is true only for grapes.
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Maybe we'll say, OK, if it's now more
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expensive to get grape seeds, maybe
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I'll start planting something else,
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because I'm not getting as much profit per pound of grape.
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So if the price of my inputs, or if the price of my cost--
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or if the size of my costs goes up, at any given price point,
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I'd want to produce less.
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So if my price of inputs go up, my supply, the supply,
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would go down.
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So if this becomes, at this price point,
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I'd make less money, so I would produce less
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or maybe I would produce other things.
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So the whole supply curve would shift to the left.
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And also even the minimum price I
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would need to supply any of it would also
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go up, when you shift the curve to the left,
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because now all of a sudden, it costs
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me more to produce even that first unit.
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And likewise, if my price of my inputs
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went down, now all of a sudden at any given price point,
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producing grapes would become more profitable
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and I would have more incentive to maybe produce grapes
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relative to other things and use more land for grapes
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than other things.
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And then you would have the whole curve shift to the right.
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Now let's think about related goods.
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So what happens with the price of related goods.
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And we have to put our-- when we think about this, we don't want
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to think of it from a demand point of view,
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because we're talking about supply.
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You want to think about it from the producer's point of view.
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So when we think about related goods here,
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we want to think about substitutes for production.
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So maybe I'm a farmer-- and I know very little bit
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about farming, so I don't even know if this is possible--
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but maybe on my land, I'm saying, well, some of my land
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is going to be for grapes and some of it
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is going to be for blueberries.
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And so what would happen if the price of a related good,
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in particular blueberries, what would happen
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if the price of blueberries went up?
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Well, if the price of blueberries went up,
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then I would say, wow, maybe I can do better with blueberries.
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And I would allocate more of my land
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to blueberries than to grapes.
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And so once again, the price of related goods--
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well, it depends which related goods--
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but if the price of productive substitutes--
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so price of other things I could produce,
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other things I can produce.
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If the price of other things I can produce goes up,
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then my supply of grapes, once again, would go down.
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And the important thing is, is in any of these circumstances--
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literally, just think it through.
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Do not just look at what I'm writing here
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and just try to memorize it in some way, shape, or form.
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This is really just a way to think about things.
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Hey, obviously, if I can make more money off
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of blueberries now all of a sudden,
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I'm going to allocate more of my land
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to blueberries than to grapes.
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Supply of grapes will go down.
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Now, let's think about what happens
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with the number of suppliers.
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And this one is pretty common sense.
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The more people they are supplying,
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the higher the supply would be.
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So if the number of suppliers goes up-- and now
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you wouldn't imagine-- this is a curve maybe
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for the aggregate supply.
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So if the number of suppliers goes up,
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then the aggregate supply would go up at any given price point.
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If the number of suppliers were to go down,
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then the aggregate supply would go down
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at any given price point.
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So this one, hopefully, is somewhat obvious.
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Then we could think about things like technology.
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And so this is just maybe, there's
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some innovation, some new type of seed
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that with the same amount of work, the same amount of land,
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can produce that many more grapes.
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So if we have technological improvements--
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I'm assuming we're not going to go into some type of dark ages.
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If we have technological improvements,
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then that will also make the supply go up.
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You can also think of it as it might
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make it cheaper to produce.
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So it's kind of the same thing here.
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The price of inputs might go down.
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So that would make your supply go up.
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Or you could just say, hey, look,
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there's just going to be more grapes popping off
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of these new types of vines that we got,
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so we're just going to produce more grapes.
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And then the last one, I'll cover--
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and it's a little bit strange in the grape analogy--
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is the expected future prices.
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So the expected future prices, price expectations.
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Now let's go away from the grapes,
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because grapes, they're perishable goods, they go bad.
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It's not like you can save goods to use them later.
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But if, let's say, you are an oil producer.
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And oil is something you can store and you can use it later.
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If you expected oil prices to be neutral today, and then
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tomorrow, all of a sudden, you are
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sure that oil prices are going to go up in the future-- you're
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sure that a year from now, oil prices
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are just going to go through the roof-- what's your incentive?
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Well, you should hoard all of your oil.
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Do not sell it today and wait to sell it in the future,
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if you're sure that's what's going to happen.
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If there's a change in expected future prices--
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so if you go from neutral to expecting prices go up-- prices
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go up in the future, then you're going to hoard your goods.
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You can't hoard grapes, because the grapes will just go bad.
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You might be able to, I don't know,
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turn them into wine or something.
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But if we're talking about something like oil,
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you would say, hey, why should I pump
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all of the fixed amount of oil in the ground
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today to sell at today's lower prices?
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I'm going to lower the supply today,
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so I can sell it in the future.
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So if the expected future prices go
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from neutral to you expect future prices to go
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up dramatically, then current supply--
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and that's, I'm just going to emphasize
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by writing the word current-- current supply will go down.
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So you can hoard it to sell it in the future.