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In: Economics

With reference to the Cob Webb Model, briefly explain the supply and demand for labour and...

  1. With reference to the Cob Webb Model, briefly explain the supply and demand for labour and the distribution of income accruing to a specific occupation that has a highly specific skill. Include all the necessary assumptions but no diagram is necessary.

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Expert Solution

The cobweb model or cobweb theory is an economic model that explains why prices might be subject to periodic fluctuations in certain types of markets. It describes cyclical supply and demand in a market where the amount produced must be chosen before prices are observed. Producers' expectations about prices are assumed to be based on observations of previous prices.

The cobweb model is generally based on a time lag between supply and demand decisions. Agricultural markets are a context where the cobweb model might apply, since there is a lag between planting and harvesting (Kaldor, 1934, p. 133-134 gives two agricultural examples: rubber and corn). Suppose for example that as a result of unexpectedly bad weather, farmers go to market with an unusually small crop of strawberries. This shortage, equivalent to a leftward shift in the market's supply curve, results in high prices. If farmers expect these high price conditions to continue, then in the following year, they will raise their production of strawberries relative to other crops. Therefore, when they go to market the supply will be high, resulting in low prices. If they then expect low prices to continue, they will decrease their production of strawberries for the next year, resulting in high prices again.

The cobweb model can have two types of outcomes:

  • If the supply curve is steeper than the demand curve, then the fluctuations decrease in magnitude with each cycle, so a plot of the prices and quantities over time would look like an inward spiral, as shown in the first diagram. This is called the stable or convergent case.
  • If the slope of the supply curve is less than the absolute value of the slope of the demand curve, then the fluctuations increase in magnitude with each cycle, so that prices and quantities spiral outwards. This is called the unstable or divergent case.

Two other possibilities are:

  • Fluctuations may also remain of constant magnitude, so a plot of the outcomes would produce a simple rectangle, if the supply and demand curves have exactly the same slope (in absolute value).
  • If the supply curve is less steep than the demand curve near the point where the two curves cross, but more steep when we move sufficiently far away, then prices and quantities will spiral away from the equilibrium price but will not diverge indefinitely; instead, they may converge to a limit cycle.

In either of the first two scenarios, the combination of the spiral and the supply and demand curves often looks like a cobweb, hence the name of the theory


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