Discrete Goods
In some cases it is impractical to represent the relationship between price and demand with a continuous curve because of small quantities demanded. Goods and services measured in small units are best represented with a smooth curve. Examples include food measured in calories and leisure measured in minutes. However, when the price of a good is very high in proportion to a consumer's budget there is a need to incorporate this limitation in both the mathematical analysis and the graph representing the relationship. While cars and houses are discrete goods for most people, cheaper goods such as glasses and bicycles are discrete goods only for the very poor. On the national level, nuclear power plants or space stations may be considered discrete goods. The concept is more useful at the individual consumer's level than at the consumers' aggregate level, because for example the difference between 3,000,000 cars demanded and 3,000,001 cars demanded is so little that the market demand for cars can be viewed as essentially continuous.
Read more about this topic: Demand (economics)
Famous quotes containing the words discrete and/or goods:
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“The power of consumer goods ... has been engendered by the so-called liberal and progressive demands of freedom, and, by appropriating them, has emptied them of their meaning, and changed their nature.”
—Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)