he economic concept that is being displayed in this article is (Elasticity of Demand). Elasticity of demand is the responsiveness of demand to a change in the price of a good or service. To determine whether this is a inelastic or elastic demand we need to analyse the characteristics of each type of demand.

Elastic good or service will tend to have a large variety of substitutes meaning that when the price of increases the consumer has many substitutes to change to. Most of the time elastic goods or services are luxury good and a large proportion of the consumer’s income is spend on it. When measuring the elasticity of demand the equation that is utilised is: % change in quantity demanded divided by % change in price. Hence when the coefficient is greater than one then we can identify it is an elastic good.

On the AD/AS curve this could be graphed as a very flat demand curve becoming flatter the more elastic it gets up to the point where the demand curve is horizontal which indicates perfectly elastic demand. Another characteristic of elastic demand is that it is not a habit forming good or service which means that the consumer will not get addicted to it or be in need of it allowing them to respond comprehensively to a change in price.

A further concept of PED is price discrimination, which is the “microeconomic pricing strategy where the consumers are being charged different prices for the same god or service.” Businesses are able to discriminate inelastic goods and services as they know for sure that the consumers will be obligated to continue purchasing it. This discrimination often takes place on different days of the week (e.g petrol, airfares) or different times of the day (e.g Bus fares). Looking at petrol we can see that the prices are at their lowest on Tuesday and Saturday. As its regional fuel tax, different regions will have deferred tax rates which can also be considered price discrimination.

Graph 1:

This graph gives us a scenario in which relatively flat demand curve represents an elastic demand change. There is a relatively small increase in prices (20%), which resulted in a large decrease (30%) in quantity demanded. This would have occured due to a high number of substitutes to switch to. The proportionate change in quantity demanded is greater than the proportionate change in price, hence portraying how responsive elastic demand is.

Inelastic goods or services are tend to have a small to no number of substitutes in a monopolistic market and are necessities. Since it is a necessity consumers will have no ch