Should Eggs Be Sold At Their Pre-Flood Prices During the Flood Crisis?In 2011, Thailand suffered one of its most destructive floods in history. Due to a combination of reduced supply (as many farms, factories, and transport links in the country were flooded) and an increase in demand (as people stocked up on essentials in case they would not be able to get any later on as the floods worsened), prices of many goods increased considerably.

On October 30th, this report from The Nation newspaper online emerged (click on the image to see the original article):

The day before, on the 29th October, the following tweet appeared reporting that the Commerce Minister apparently said consumers should not accept higher (“inflated”) prices for eggs:

Typically eggs, before the floods, would sell at 3 or 4 baht each, so the new price represented an approximate doubling.On 31st October, the Commerce Ministry announced Price Controls on 9 Essential Goods – although eggs weren’t specifically included in the 9 Essentials, a representative from the ministry said “about 3.2 million eggs from Malaysia will reach Thailand on November 3. It would be sold at no more than Bt4 each”.On the same day, 31st October, this report emerged .

In the scenario above, why did they sell like hot cakes? Why did huge queues form? Why did the government have to ration eggs after maintaining a ‘ceiling’ (maximum) price of 3 Thai baht?On 1st November, this tweet appeared on the topic:

Now we are introduced to the word ‘shortage’ – in Economics that has a specific meaning – what does a shortage mean?Some graphsLet’s for simplicity argue that the price of eggs had risen because of a severe reduction in supply (although it is possible that the demand for eggs increased as well, it seems

likely that supply would have reduced by more than any increase in demand). Follow the steps on the graphs below:

So the question you should try and answer, as a student of Economics, is in the title …Should Eggs Have Been Sold At Their Pre-Flood Prices?