Offer Curves

Offer Curves
The offer curve is an alternative way to describe an individuals demand behavior, i.e., his
demand function. And by summing up individuals demand behavior, we can also use the
offer curve to describe the market demand function.
The offer curve is generally well-defined for any number of goods, but we want to focus
on the two-good case for the strong geometric insight it provides in helping to understand
the analytical concept. Throughout this note there will be only two goods, with quantities
denoted by x and y.
The idea behind the offer curve is to depict the individuals demand behavior in the same
space we use to depict his preferences (his indifference map) namely, the commodity space,
which, in the two-good case, is two-dimensional. You probably recall the price-consumption
curve from your intermediate microeconomics course. There, as you change the price of one
of the goods (say, the x-good) while holding constant the consumers wealth and the price
10
9
8
7
Price-consumption curve
Y Axis
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0
X Axis
Figure 1: Price-consumption Curve
10
of the other good, you geometrically rotate the budget constraint and trace out the locus
of bundles (x, y) the consumer would buy at the various prices px , as in Figure 1. Figure 2
retains the locus of (x, y)-bundles the price-consumption curve but omits the budget
constraints and indifference curves. This price-consumption curve shows exactly the bundles
this consumer would potentially purchase at the various possible prices px ; all the other
bundles in his commodity-space are ones he would not purchase, at any price (assuming the
other goods price and the consumers wealth, py and w, remain fixed at their original values).
10
9
8
7
Price-consumption curve
Y Axis
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0
10
X Axis
Figure 2: Price-consumption Curve
The offer curve is exactly the same concept, but in the general equilibrium context. So
instead of holding constant the consumers wealth or income, we hold constant his initialendowment bundle (
x,
y ). And instead of tracing out his chosen bundles (x, y) at all the

various prices of just the x-good, the offer curve traces out the locus of net bundles (x, y )
he would choose at all the various possible relative prices, i.e., at the various price-ratios
= px /py .
Definition: If there are two goods and a consumer has the utility function u and initial

holdings (
x,
y ), then the consumers offer curve is the set of all net bundles (x, y ) for which

there is some price-ratio px /py at which (x, y ) is the net bundle he chooses i.e., for which
(
x + x,
y + y ) is the solution of his utility maximization problem.
For a given consumer, we would like to express his offer curve as a function for example,
y = h(x). The function h would provide the answer to the question if this consumer were to
choose the (net) quantity x of the x-good, how much would he choose of the y-good? The
way to answer this question, and the way to derive the function h, is kind of a clever trick:
(1) For any quantity x of the x-good, we can determine from the demand function (actually,
from the inverse of the demand function) what the price-ratio would have to be in order to
induce him to choose the amount x.

(2) And then, at that price-ratio, we can use his budget constraint to determine the quantity
y of the y-good he would choose: y = x.
If the demand function is single-valued and decreasing in a goods relative price, then the
inverse demand function will be well-defined and we can carry out this operation.
Examples: The following pages contain some examples. First we derive the offer curve
of one of the Cobb-Douglas consumers in our earlier Walrasian equilibrium numerical twoperson, two-good example. Then we obtain the market net demand functions for both goods
in that example, and we use the net demand functions first to simply trace out the market
offer curve, and then to obtain a closed-form solution for the market offer curve (the function
h described above, but for the market offer curve instead of just the individuals offer curve).
Then there are two more examples in which offer curves are found for individual consumers.

Offer Curves

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Offer Curves

Figure 2: Price-consumption Curve

induce him to choose the amount x.

y of the y-good he would choose: y = x.

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