Setting Up the Table

Supply Schedule

This table contains three columns. The first contains reference labels A, B, C, etc. for each price-quantity pair. The second is the supply price, ranging from $5 to $50. And the third is the quantity supplied, ranging from 0 to 900 Yellow Tarantulas. This schedule assumes other ceteris paribus factors remain unchanged and that the quantities are those supplied during a one year time period.

Running Through the Numbers

• First, as the price increases from a low of $5 to a high of $50, the quantity supplied of Yellow Tarantulas increases from 0 to 900. Higher prices are related to larger quantities. This relation, this direct relation between supply price and quantity supplied, IS the basic law of supply.


• Second, the quantities in the schedule represent maximum values. That is, if the price is $10, then the maximum quantity supplied is 100 Yellow Tarantulas. It is not 150, nor even 101, but only 100. Alternatively, the prices in the schedule represent minimum values. If sellers offer 100 Yellow Tarantulas for sale, then the minimum supply price they are willing and able to accept is $10, not $5, not even $9.99, but $10.


• Third, this whole schedule, all ten pairs of the price-quantity numbers (and all others that could be included) is supply. Supply is the entire range of prices and quantities, all pairs. In contrast, quantity supplied is any specific number of Yellow Tarantulas sellers are willing and able to sell at a specific supply price. Selecting a different price generates a different quantity supplied.


• Fourth, these numbers are hypothetical, not just in the sense that they were made up to illustrate supply, but in the sense that they suggest a "What if" relation. This particular schedule does not indicate the actual supply price of Yellow Tarantulas nor the actual quantity supplied. It only indicates quantity supplied given the supply price, or supply price given the quantity supplied. If, for example, the supply price is $10, then sellers are willing and able to sell 100 Yellow Tarantulas. This does not mean that sellers will sell, are selling, or ever will sell 100 Yellow Tarantulas. It only indicates what they would sell at a $10 price.