Market Equilibration The process of achieving a market equilibrium relies on some basic principles. The principle of demand holds that, all other things being equal, the higher the price of a good the less people will demand of that good (Investopedia, 2012). There are exceptions to this law, for example goods with inverse price elasticity of demand, but in general the law of demand holds for all goods, even those with very low price elasticity of demand.

The law of supply is the inverse. It holds that all other things being equal the higher the price of a good, the more suppliers will want to provide. Thus, as prices rise, the supply of a good will rise because the profit associated with the production of that good will increase, but the lower the demand will be, because the buyers' marginal utility will decrease.

Those other things that must be equal, however, are the determinants of demand...

Among the determinants of demand are the price elasticity of demand, the availability of substitutes, the propensity of buyers to substitute and cross-price elasticity of demand. Buyer utility plays into the elasticity of demand, as does the nature of the good (whether the good is discretionary or mandatory). Supply is affected by opportunity cost as well, since producers often face production constraints. Those include capacity, the marginal cost of increased capacity, exit barriers, time, availability of key inputs and producer price control over new inputs.
Efficient markets theory holds that the price and supply of goods in a free market will trend towards an equilibrium point. It is unlikely that this point would ever be reached, because there is a time lag in the feedback, but the process works by way of a series of adjustments. Given that populations…