ABSTRACT
So far we have considered the individual as a buyer and consumer of goods with a given source of money at his disposal, but we have not discussed in any detail how that money can be acquired. One obvious possibility is for it to be obtained by selling something, and most people obtain the means to buy goods by selling labour services. Since there is no reason to suppose that individuals are any less rational in their selling decisions than in their buying decisions, it seems reasonable to analyse them in a similar way and that is the task of this chapter. Selling decisions, of course, determine what the consumer supplies to the market rather than what he demands from it, but apart from that the underlying considerations are basically similar. To emphasize these similarities we will start by considering the case of an individual with a stock of goods that he can either use himself or sell to the market, and then go on to show how the analysis can be applied to the supply of labour services and to the supply of savings.
