This situation is reversed when the market demand curve in inelastic . In Figure 10-4 (b), a shift in the supply curve causes equilibrium price to rise substantially, but quantity is little changed because people do not reduce their demands very much if prices rise. Consequently , the shift upward in the supply curve is passed on to demand almost completely in the form of higher prices. The result of this demonstration is almost conterintuitive. The impact, say, of a wage increase on house prices depends not so much on how suppliers react but on the nature of demand for houses. If we asked only how much builders’ costs were increased by a wage increase, we might make a very inaccurate prediction of how prices would change. The effect of any given shift upward in a supply curve can only be determined with additional information about the nature of demand for good being produced.