Acts as a communication channel between employers and employees.
Helps solve disputes through negotiation and collective bargaining.
Negotiates for higher wages and better working conditions.
Can improve productivity and workers' standards of living.
Encourages governments to introduce or increase minimum wages.
A trade union (labour union) is an organization that protects the rights and interests of workers. Workers join by paying a subscription fee (membership fee).
The fee helps cover administrative and legal costs.
Trade unions negotiate with employers for better working conditions.
Workers and employers often have different objectives.
Male Workers
More likely to work in physically demanding jobs.
Common in construction, mining, and engineering.
Usually have fewer career breaks.
Higher participation in some labour markets.
Female Workers
These workers are involved in extracting or collecting natural resources from the earth.
Examples:
Farmers
Fishermen
Miners
An individual's choice of occupation depends on wage factors and non-wage factors.
These are the financial rewards received for work.
These are factors other than money that influence job choice.
Borrowing occurs when an individual, business, or government takes a loan from a bank or financial institution and repays it over time with interest.
Borrowing creates debt.
Debt is manageable if repayments are affordable and interest rates are low.
Higher interest rates increase repayment costs and reduce purchasing power.
Money is anything that is generally accepted as a means of payment for goods and services.
Money is used to buy and sell goods and services.
Example: Using ₹100 to buy a notebook.
Definition:PES measures how much the quantity supplied changes when the price changes.
Formula:
PES = % change in quantity supplied ÷ % change in price
Example:
Price increases by 10%
Supply increases by 20%
Definition:
Price Elasticity of Demand measures how much the quantity demanded of a product changes when its price changes.
Demand is the quantity of a good or service that consumers are willing and able to buy at different prices over a given period.
Law of Demand: As the price increases, demand decreases. As the price decreases, demand increases (assuming other factors remain constant).
Factors affecting demand:
Price of the product
Consumer income
Studies individual consumers, firms, and markets.
Examines how prices are determined.
Focuses on demand, supply, costs, and profits.
Examples:
Price of a mobile phone.
Inflation is the sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services over time. As inflation rises, the purchasing power of money falls—meaning the same amount of money buys fewer goods and services.
A loaf of bread costs $2 today.
If inflation is 5% over the next year, the same loaf may cost about $2.10.
Your money buys slightly less than before.
Living standards refer to the level of wealth, comfort, and access to goods and services that people have in their daily lives. They show how well people are able to meet their needs and enjoy a comfortable life.
Income and wages
Employment opportunities
Quality of housing
Access to healthcare
Market failure occurs when resources are not allocated efficiently by the market, leading to a waste of resources and reduced welfare for society.
Costs or benefits affect people who are not directly involved.
Example: Factory pollution affects nearby residents.
Can market failure be prevented?
How do you face market failure? Is there a comeback after one?
Reminder - do not copy paste answers from ChatGPT, just write what you have understood.
The government helps the economy work smoothly and improves the quality of life of people.
Builds roads, bridges, and railways.
Provides education and healthcare.
A monopoly is a market structure where one firm dominates the market and has significant control over prices and supply. A pure monopoly exists when only one firm supplies the entire market.
Single Supplier – One firm is the main or only seller in the market.
Price Maker – The firm can set prices because it has strong market power.
Imperfect Knowledge – Customers and competitors may not have complete information about the firm's products or methods.
High Barriers to Entry – It is difficult for new firms to enter the market due to:
In economics, market structure refers to the important features of a market or industry. It helps economists understand how businesses compete with each other.
The main features of a market structure are:
The number and size of firms
The level of price and non-price competition
The barriers to entry (how easy or difficult it is for new firms to enter the market)
Labour-intensive production uses more human labour than machinery or equipment.
The cost of workers is higher than the cost of capital.
Teaching
A firm is a business organization that produces goods or provides services to customers in order to earn profit.
Examples:
A bakery selling bread
A football club selling tickets and merchandise
A car company making vehicles
Is a firm just one single business or can it have multiple branches?
Is it possible for a shop to conduct sales without a firm?
Does every store belong to a firm?
Factors of production are the resources used to produce goods and services.
Land
Natural resources used in production
Examples: raw materials, fish, physical land
Firms can be grouped based on the type of activity they perform:
Extracts raw materials from nature
Examples: fishing, mining, farming
These are monetary benefits received for work.
Wages
Paid hourly/daily/weekly
Example: Shop worker paid per hour
Saving occurs when a person sets aside part of their current income for future use.
Future Spending
People sacrifice current spending to use money later
Household spending mainly depends on the level of income a person or family earns.
👉 The higher the income, the more a household can usually spend.
Households earn income from different sources:
Market failure occurs when the free market fails to allocate resources efficiently
This leads to a mismatch between what is produced and what society actually needs
Market failure happens when the free market does NOT use resources efficiently.
This means demand and supply alone cannot give the best outcome for society.
Under-provision (too little produced):
Education
Competition forces firms to:
Produce what customers actually want
Improve quality and reduce costs
Encourages innovation and new ideas
An economic system is how a country:
Organises production
Distributes goods and services
Allocates scarce resources
Price Elasticity of Supply (PES) depends on several factors that affect how easily producers can respond to price changes.
If firms have unused resources (labour, machines, space), they can increase output easily.
This makes supply more price elastic.
Example:
Coca-Cola can quickly increase production because of its large-scale bottling capacity.
Price Elasticity of Supply (PES) measures how much the quantity supplied of a product changes when its price changes.
It shows how responsive producers are to price changes.
Supply is price elastic when producers can increase production easily and quickly when the price rises.
This usually happens when:
Firms have spare capacity
Sales revenue is the money a business receives from selling goods or services.
Formula:Sales Revenue = Price × Quantity Demanded
⚠️ Note:
Sales revenue is not the same as profit.
Profit = Sales Revenue − Total Costs of Production
Price Elasticity of Demand (PED) measures how responsive the quantity demanded of a product is when its price changes. Several factors determine whether demand is elastic (very responsive) or inelastic (less responsive).
This is the most important determinant of PED.
If a product has many close substitutes, demand will be price elastic because consumers can easily switch when the price rises.
Examples
Bananas, chocolate bars → Elastic demand
Price Elasticity of Demand (PED) measures how much the quantity demanded of a product changes when its price changes.
It shows how responsive customers are to price changes.
Law of Demand:
When price increases → quantity demanded decreases.
When price decreases → quantity demanded increases.
Changes in non-price factors affecting demand or supply will shift curves and change the equilibrium price and equilibrium quantity in a market.
When supply decreases, the supply curve shifts left.
Government taxes (e.g., tax on tobacco)
Market equilibrium is the situation where:
Quantity demanded = Quantity supplied
There is no shortage
There is no surplus
At this point:
Demand is the quantity of a good or service that consumers are willing and able to buy at a given price.
Demand depends on price and other factors.
Price of the good
A mixed economy has both:
Private sector – businesses owned by individuals or groups.
Public sector – organisations owned and controlled by the government.
Almost every country today uses a mixed economic system.
Income and wealth inequality — rich people enjoy more choices and better services, while the poor may struggle to meet basic needs.
Basic needs of the poor may be ignored — firms focus on profitable goods, not what society really needs.
Environmental damage — overuse of natural resources, pollution, and climate change happen because firms aim for maximum profit.
Lack of public goods — important things like street lighting, public roads, and national defence may not be provided properly.
Social hardship — poor and vulnerable groups depend mainly on charities, not the government.
Wasteful competition — too much money is spent on advertising, packaging, and branding to win customers.
An economic system is just the way a country uses its resources and runs its economy. The big question is: Should the government control everything, or should people and businesses decide things on their own?
There are three main types of economic systems:
Here, buyers and sellers decide everything through demand and supply.
Government doesn’t interfere much.
PES shows how quickly and easily producers can increase supply when the price of a product rises. A high PES (elastic supply) is usually better for firms because it helps them respond fast to market changes.
It helps them stay competitive in the market.
They can earn more revenue and profit when prices rise.
Firms can increase PES by:
They are the factors that decide how quickly and easily producers can increase their supply when the price of a product rises.
In other words, these factors explain how responsive supply is to a change in price.
If supply can increase quickly → elastic supply. If supply cannot increase easily → inelastic supply.
If a firm has unused machines and workers, it can increase supply easily → elastic.
Price elasticity of supply shows how quickly and easily producers can increase or decrease the amount they supply when the price changes.
1. Price Elastic Supply
Producers can increase supply quickly and easily when price rises.
No big delays.
Knowing about PED helps businesses, consumers, and the government make better decisions about prices and demand.
If demand is price inelastic (people keep buying even if price rises), the firm can increase prices to earn more revenue. Example: Medicine or petrol.
If demand is price elastic (people stop buying when price rises), the firm should avoid raising prices because sales will fall a lot. Example: Soft drinks or snacks.
These are the factors that decide how strongly people react when the price changes.
If people can easily find another product, they will switch when the price goes up → Elastic Example: Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
If there are no other options, people still buy it → Inelastic Example: Medicine or toothpaste.
Law of Demand & Price Elasticity of Demand (PED)
The Law of Demand says that when the price increases, people usually buy less of that product.
But how much less they buy depends on how sensitive or responsive they are to price changes.
PED shows how much demand changes when the price changes.
Price Inelastic Demand → Demand changes a little when price changes.Example: Rice, petrol, toothpaste – people still need them even if prices rise.
Price Elasticity of Supply (PES)
Definition: PES measures how much the quantity supplied of a good changes when its price changes.
Formula:
Elastic Supply (PES > 1): Supply changes more than price.
Inelastic Supply (PES < 1): Supply changes less than price.
Meaning: Price elasticity of demand shows how much the demand for a product changes when its price changes. It helps us understand how sensitive customers are to price changes.
For example:
If the price of ice cream goes up and people stop buying it quickly, the demand is elastic.
But if the price of salt goes up and people still buy it, the demand is inelastic.
Formula:
When non-price factors (like taxes or weather) change, they can shift demand or supply.
For example, if the government adds a tax on cigarettes, the supply decreases (moves left).
This makes the price go up (from P1 to P2) and the number of cigarettes sold go down (from Q1 to Q2).
If supply moves left, prices go up because there’s less to sell — like when bad weather reduces crops.
If supply moves right, prices go down because there’s more to sell — like when farmers get subsidies or the weather is good.
market equilibrium
market equilibrium means the point where demand and supply are equal. At this point, the price is just right — no shortage and no extra goods. This price is called the equilibrium price, and the amount bought and sold is the equilibrium quantity.
Market disequilibrium
market disequilibrium happens when demand and supply aren’t equal. This causes shortages or surpluses.
If the price is too low, more people want to buy than what’s available — this creates a shortage. When that happens, prices usually rise until they reach the equilibrium price again.
the law of supply means when the price goes up, producers supply more, and when the price goes down, they supply less. That’s why the supply curve slopes upward from left to right — showing a positive link between price and quantity supplied.
movement along a supply curve happens only when price changes.
If price rises, producers supply more — this is called an extension in supply.
If price falls, producers supply less — this is a contraction in supply.
Supply is the willingness and ability of producers to sell a good or service at a given price in a given period of time.
It shows how much producers are ready to sell at different prices.
As the price of a good increases, the quantity supplied also increases.
As the price decreases, the quantity supplied decreases.
A shopkeeper sold 20 packets of chips when the price was ₹10 each. When the price increased to ₹15, he sold 35 packets. What does this show about the relationship between price and quantity supplied?
Demand = when customers are willing and able to pay for a product.(If you only want it but can’t afford it, that’s not real demand — that’s just desire.)
Quantity demanded = how much people will buy at each price level.
When price increases → demand decreases
When price decreases → demand increases
Inflation means a rise in the general price level of goods and services in an economy.
It means money loses value — you can buy less with the same amount.
Example: If prices rise by 5%, what cost ₹100 before will cost ₹105 now.
Definition:Market structure = how a market is organized based on number of firms, type of products, and control over price.
Determines price, quantity, and competition.
1. Perfect Competition
Many sellers, identical products
Firms cannot control price
A firm is an organisation that uses resources (land, labor, capital, and enterprise) to produce goods and services for consumers.
Its main goal is usually to make a profit.
Examples: Apple (electronics), Tata (cars), and local shops.
Factors of production are the resources used to produce goods and services. They are the basic inputs needed for all kinds of production.
Economists divide the factors of production into four main groups:
Land
Labor
Capital
Economic development means improving a country’s income, jobs, industries, and living standards.
Countries have different levels of development because of differences in resources, education, technology, and government systems.
The world can be divided into:
Developed countries – rich and advanced (like USA, Japan, Germany)
Developing countries – still growing (like India, Brazil, South Africa)
what is labor force ?
The labor force refers to all the people in a country who are willing and able to work .
It includes :
People who have jobs ( the employed ) ,and
People who are looking for jobs ( the unemployed but able to work .)
Importance of labor force
What is unemployment ?.
Unemployment is when people who are able and willing to work cannot find a job.
Types of Unemployment ?.
Frictional unemployment - Short - term , when people are between jobs .
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