gallons. If you had only the demand and supply schedules, and not the graph, you could find the equilibrium by

looking for the price level on the tables where the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied are equal.

The word “equilibrium” means “balance.” If a market is at its equilibrium price and quantity, then it has no

reason to move away from that point. However, if a market is not at equilibrium, then economic pressures arise

to move the market toward the equilibrium price and the equilibrium quantity.

Imagine, for example, that the price of a gallon of gasoline was above the equilibrium price—that is, instead of

$1.40 per gallon, the price is $1.80 per gallon. The dashed horizontal line at the price of $1.80 in Figure 3.4

illustrates this above-equilibrium price. At this higher price, the quantity demanded drops from 600 to 500.

This decline in quantity reflects how consumers react to the higher price by finding ways to use less gasoline.
{"uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "file_size_mb": 26.99, "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)", "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a", "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:37:44.339247", "file_type": ".pdf", "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "batch_upload": true, "creator": "PDFMiner", "total_pages": 597}