Demand and Quantity Demanded: A New Pedagogical Approach to Improve Student Understanding of Two of the Most Fundamental 'Economics 101' Concepts

Abstract

Students in principles of microeconomics courses have difficulty understanding the difference between a change in demand and a change in quantity demanded. This paper offers an alternative approach to presenting the concepts in the classroom, which may improve students’ comprehension of these two important elements of basic economics. The approach revises the use of the phrase quantity demanded as currently used in the economics lexicon, and adds two new terms that may be fundamentally more intuitive to students. The paper discusses how this modified approach might be used to help students distinguish between a change in demand and a change in quantity demanded. Further, it shows how this approach can be applied to the concept of elasticity.

Keywords: economic education and teaching of economics, undergraduate

JEL Classification: A220