AHD disagrees, and only recognises 'goods' in the sense met:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/18/G0191800.html
noun 4a.,b.,c.:
a. Commodities; wares: frozen goods. b. Portable personal property. c. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) Fabric; material.

I consider Mansfield's usage incorrect, and think it would have been better written with 'article' or 'ware' (though ware itself is usually a plural 'wares'). On the other hand, if the author has continually referred to goods in his text, then the temptation to use the singular if necessary or adequate is probably overpowering...

It sounds weird to me and I can't find it in this form in my dictionaries. The sentence you quote sounds strange, as "good" looks like an adjective, so you read it as "the price of a good change ..." and then do a double-take when you see that actually it is "changes" and is a verb. To be honest, I suspect the people writing "a good" in this way simply feel unomfortable about writing "a goods" (understandable) and haven't come up with the idea of writing "a product" or something.

Oxford Dict. of E:

good
...
(goods) merchandise or possessions: imports of luxury goods

Longman Dict. of Business English has no entry with "a good", only using it in the plural.

Naja, bis zum heutigen Tag hätte ich behauptet, dass der Gebrauch von "good" in der Volkswirtschaftslehre völlig normal ist. Vielleicht ist er nur in der Volkswirtschaftslehre üblich?

Auch ich bin der Meinung, dass in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften "good" durchaus auch im Singular möglich ist.

Auch m-w.com führt eine entsprechende mögliche Verwendung im Singular auf:

m-w.com:

3 a : something that has economic utility or satisfies an economic want b plural : personal property having intrinsic value but usually excluding money, securities, and negotiable instruments c plural : CLOTH d plural : something manufactured or produced for sale : WARES, MERCHANDISE "canned goods" e plural, British : FREIGHT

It is certainly used a lot in books - I guess you must be right. It's strange it isn't in the dictionaries, isn't it?

Foundations of Microeconomics - Page 69
by Robin Bade, Michael Parkin - 2001
The cross elasticity of demand is a measure of the extent to which the demand
for a good changes when the price of a substitute or complement changes, ...
Snippet view - About this book

Macroeconomics - Page 73
by Michael Parkin - 1999 - 528 pages
Movement Along the Demand Curve If the price of a good changes but everything
else remains the same, there is a movement along the demand curve. ...
Snippet view - About this book

Basic Economic Principles: A Guide for Students - Page 34
by David Edward O'Connor, Christopher C. Faille, ( - 2000 - 255 pages
When a determinant of demand changes, the entire "demand" for a good changes "at
each and every price." What are these determinants of demand? ...
Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
 
n the Theory of Exchange Value - Page 154
by Gersch, Alexander - 1969
... an approach which is quite modern and to-day universally adopted by economists.)
If the price of a good changes this can often alter the intrinsic ...
Snippet view - About this book

Models and Reality in Economics - Page 72
by Steven Rappaport - 1998 - 223 pages
... paribus clauses implies that (LD) is equivalent to this: there is a set of
conditions C such that whenever C holds and the price of a good changes, ...
Snippet view - About this book

Study Guide and Problems to Accompany Economics, Fifth Edition, by Richard G. Lipsey and Peter O....
by Dorothy F. Forbusch, Dascomb Ramsey Forbush, Richard G. Lipsey, Frederic C. Menz - 1978 - 358 pages
Page 48
No preview available

The Essentials of Microeconomics - Page 8
by Research and Education Association - 1989
1.7.3 DEMAND CURVE A demand curve depicts how the quantity demanded of a good
changes as the price of that good changes, holding everything else constant. ...
Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book



Study Guide and Problems to Accompany Economics, Sixth Edition, Richard G. Lipsey, Peter O. Steiner - Page 68
by Dascomb Ramsey Forbush, Fredric C. Menz, Richard G. Lipsey - 1981 - 409 pages
... points of tangency of a set of indifference curves with a series of parallel
budget lines, showing how consumption of a good changes as income changes, ...
Snippet view - About this book



Microeconomics - Page 16
by Research and Education Association, Max Fogiel - 2000 - 203 pages
1.7.3 Demand curve A demand curve depicts how the quantity demanded of a good
changes as the price of that good changes, holding everything else constant. ...
Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book

http://www.google.co.uk/books?q=%22a+good+cha...

@CM2DD - if economists were linguists and vice versa, we'd have no need for specialists in either field, would we?

SCNR ;o)

Noch ein paar akademische Links:

Distinguish between an inferior good and a Giffen good

As we deduced in the last topic, the model of rational consumer choice predicts that when the price of a good changes, ceteris paribus, the consumer will consumer [sic!] more of the good (hence the downward sloping individual demand curve).

http://www.lmu.ac.uk/lbs/epia/people/beachill...

Have you ever heard of the law of demand? This economic principle says that we will buy less of a good if the price rises. You can probably think of many goods you buy that would meet the law of demand. But there are other goods that seem to defy the law of demand. That may be due to the price elasticity of the good.

http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.cfm?l...

Q: What determines whether or not we buy a particular good, and if we do buy it, how much of it we buy during any given time period?

A: Whether we think that we need the good, or just want it.

http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/dfunderburk/...

To answer important questions like these, you need to understand the economic meaning of the demand for a good.

http://www.mbs.edu/home/jgans/mecon/value/Seg...

If two goods are independent, then a change in the price of one good has no effect on the quantity demanded of the other (Ex: price of chicken and price of airplane tickets)

http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/ECON100A/2006...

Danke für die ausführlichen und schnellen Antworten! Ich schlussfolgere daraus, dass die Übersetzung für ökonomisches Fachpublikum ok ist, ansonsten sollte man lieber goods oder products verwenden.