Supply & Demand Lessons From Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy

This is my first post on to the Economics blog as we kick off with our first offering of AS Economics at my current school this year. It’s inpsired by the series of ‘Economics at the Movies’ posts. I’m a big fan of the film ‘Trading Places’ so when we reached the point of looking at supply and demand together, creating market equilibrium and market disequilibrium, I used part of the film to discuss and demonstrate these concepts.

Those of you familiar with the film will know that Winthrop (Ackroyd) and Valentine (Murphy) take revenge over commodity giants the Duke Bros for playing with their lives for a $1 bet. They do this by foiling their plot to get rich on the Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice market using a phony crop report. It’s useful to give the students this background before you play the clip.

We watched the film clip in one go, discussed the key points as a class where demand and supply shifted, and then watched the clip again, pausing at these key moments in order to draw a demand and supply curve on the board/in their notes. We ended up with 2 or 3 demand shifts and a supply shift and 5 different price levels.

At the end they were able to see how the difference in price levels had ruined the Duke Bros who had largely bought at the top of the market, and had helped Winthrop and Valentine get rich at their expense by selling high and buying low. This made it great for introducing the trickier general concept of short-selling which appealed to some of my more able students.

Enjoy the movie!