Chapter Journaling #4

The first half of Chapter 4 continued the trend of all of the previous chapters, and I considered the chapter a relatively easy read. On a scale of 1-3, I would rate this chapter a 1 as well. The beginning of chapter 4 keyed in on three specific terms : supply, demand, and market. Mankiw defines a market as a group of buyers and sellers of a particular good or service. There are two opposite forms of markets that are depicted in the text book. There is the perfectly competitive market where the goods offered for sale are exactly, or almost exactly the same and the buyers and sellers are so numerous in count that no one buyer or seller has any sort of influence on the market place. An example of a competitive market would be the places that sell food near Whitney Young which includes Ella's, Billy Goats, and Pepperinos. The polar opposite of the competitive market would be a monopoly; that is when a single seller, or company sets the price in the market for a particular good or service. One example of a monopoly would be Monsanto. Supply and demand was an easy topic to grasp. Personally, I think the easiest way to think of supply and demand is the supply-demand graph. It's a downward slope; it starts with low supply which results in high demand. Then, it gradually shifts to the opposite.Basically, supply and demand has an inverse relationship. The examples in this chapter simplified supply and demand which helped me understand the concept a lot. I have two questions about this chapter. This was on the chapter 1-3 test that i find relative now. Do the governments regulate prices on goods and services to make it more"safe"? That would mean supply and demand can't really take it's natural course. My second question is: how would you graph a supply and demand graph if it involves more than 1 specific good if it's related to one another?