A-Level Economics/Price determination in a competitive market/The interrelationship between markets
Topic anchor · Paper 1 and Paper 3

The interrelationship between markets

Joint demand, competitive demand, derived demand and joint supply — how a shock in one market travels into another.

Why did a war two thousand miles away change the price of your bread?

Spec pointAQA 4.1.3.6
Edexcel A1.2.7
Pearson IALWEC11 · Unit 1
SourceCC deck · Edexcel library
Board mapping

Where this sits on your specification

The economics does not change between boards — only the reference number and the exam style. This page is written to the concept, so find your own line below and read on.

SpecificationReferenceSection
AQA A-Level Economics 71364.1.3.6The interrelationship between markets
Edexcel A Economics 9EC01.2.7Theme 1
Pearson Edexcel IAL EconomicsWEC11 · Unit 1Markets in action
Section I

What this spec point covers

Joint demand, competitive demand, derived demand and joint supply — how a shock in one market travels into another.

AQA sets this out as 4.1.3.6 — The interrelationship between markets, inside Price determination in a competitive market. Demand, supply, and the four elasticities that carry Paper 1. It is assessed on Paper 1 and Paper 3.

The full anchor publishes November 2026

Topic pages on this site are not written and abandoned. Each one gets the definition and the specification framing first, then the diagram drawn properly, then how the board actually examines it, and then the five branches below — added over months rather than dumped in one go.

This page is at the first stage. If you need this topic before then, the revision platform already covers the full specification interactively, and the Intelligence Briefing carries model answers on the essays most likely to appear.

Section II

Where you have already seen this

Application is worth more marks than knowledge on this specification — AO2 carries 26–29% against AO1's 20–23%. So the examples are not decoration. They are where a third of the paper lives, and the ones that earn are the ones specific enough to be checked.

01

Ukrainian wheat feeds into flour, bread and animal feed, so one shock arrives three times.

02

Oil is an input to plastics and fertiliser, which is why its price shows up in the supermarket twice.

03

Electric vehicle demand raised copper prices, and copper is in everything else.

Each of these becomes a full piece in its own right, in the branches below. What is here is the hook; the argument, the data and the essay application are what the pieces are for.

Section III

What the examiner is testing

Every question on this specification is marked against four assessment objectives, and they are not weighted equally. Most revision treats a topic as a body of knowledge; the paper treats it as four separate skills applied to that knowledge. This topic is examined as a define and apply topic, so here is what each objective looks like on it specifically.

 WeightWhat it isWhat it means on the interrelationship between markets
AO120–23%Knowledge and understanding of terms, concepts, theories and modelsThis is an AO1-heavy topic and the definitions are worth learning exactly. It is also the lightest-weighted objective, so do not stop here.
AO226–29%Application of that knowledge to economic contextsGive an example specific enough to be checked. “A public good, such as street lighting” earns; “a public good” does not.
AO326–29%Analysis of issues and their impact on economic agentsShow what follows from the concept — from scarcity, or immobility, or non-excludability — rather than restating it.
AO422–25%Evaluation of arguments, using evidence to support a judgementName the boundary. Where does the concept stop applying, and which case is genuinely contested?

The part worth knowing before the exam

AO2 and AO3 together carry more than half the qualification. Knowledge is the lightest-weighted objective on the paper, which is why an answer that knows everything and applies nothing lands in the middle bands. Most candidates revise AO1 because it is the part that feels like revising.
Going deeper

The five branches

Everything above is the anchor. The pieces below take it further, and each one is built to train a particular assessment objective rather than to cover the topic again. They accumulate — nothing on this page gets deleted, it gets added to.

Trains AO2
Leaf 01 · The Case
The Case: the interrelationship between markets
One firm, one market, one week of the real economy, taken apart with this topic's tools.
Planned · Dec 2026
Trains AO1 · AO3
Leaf 02 · The Diagram
The Diagram: the interrelationship between markets
The diagram drawn properly, then drawn wrongly, so the difference cannot be unseen. Ninety seconds on film.
Planned · Jan 2027
Trains AO1 · AO3
Leaf 03 · The Misconception
The Misconception: the interrelationship between markets
The thing almost every candidate believes about this and the examiner penalises.
Planned · Feb 2027
Trains AO4
Leaf 04 · The Examiner's Line
The Examiner's Line: the interrelationship between markets
The sentence that moves an answer on this topic up a mark band, taken from real marking.
Planned · Mar 2027
Trains AO1–AO4
Leaf 05 · The Question
The Question: the interrelationship between markets
A question in the board's own register, with an A answer and an A* answer side by side, annotated.
Planned · Mar 2027
Nearby

Related topics

Do not wait for the page

The revision platform covers the whole specification now, and the Academy marks your written answers against the framework examiners use. The library is the free layer, not the only one.

Enquire about a place See the platform