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Marginal Utility
In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product. The marginal utility of a good or service describes how much pleasure or satisfaction is gained by consumers as a result of the increase or decrease in consumption by one unit. There are three types of marginal utility. They are positive, negative, or zero marginal utility. For instance, you like eating pizza, the second piece of pizza brings you more satisfaction than only eating one piece of pizza. It means your marginal utility from purchasing pizza is positive. However, after eating the second piece you feel full, and you would not feel any better from eating the third piece. This means your marginal utility from eating pizza is zero. Moreover, you might feel sick if you eat more than three pieces of pizza. At this time, your marginal utility is negative. In other words, a negative marginal utility indicates that every unit of goods or service consumed will do more harm than good, which will ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics; between rational a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diminishing Utility
In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product. The marginal utility of a good or service describes how much pleasure or satisfaction is gained by consumers as a result of the increase or decrease in consumption by one unit. There are three types of marginal utility. They are positive, negative, or zero marginal utility. For instance, you like eating pizza, the second piece of pizza brings you more satisfaction than only eating one piece of pizza. It means your marginal utility from purchasing pizza is positive. However, after eating the second piece you feel full, and you would not feel any better from eating the third piece. This means your marginal utility from eating pizza is zero. Moreover, you might feel sick if you eat more than three pieces of pizza. At this time, your marginal utility is negative. In other words, a negative marginal utility indicates that every unit of goods or service consumed will do more harm than good, which will ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and social science. The company publishes approximately 1,800 journals and 5,000 new books each year and their backlist encompasses over 70,000 titles. Routledge is claimed to be the largest global academic publisher within humanities and social sciences. In 1998, Routledge became a subdivision and imprint of its former rival, Taylor & Francis Group (T&F), as a result of a £90-million acquisition deal from Cinven, a venture capital group which had purchased it two years previously for £25 million. Following the merger of Informa and T&F in 2004, Routledge became a publishing unit and major imprint within the Informa "academic publishing" division. Routledge is headquartered in the main T&F office in Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfords ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Smith
Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— or "The Father of Capitalism",———— he wrote two classic works, ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' (1759) and '' An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'' (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as ''The Wealth of Nations'', is considered his ''magnum opus'' and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline. Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God’s will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them. Among other economic theories, the work introduced Smith's idea of absolute advantage. Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperfect Competition
In economics, imperfect competition refers to a situation where the characteristics of an economic market do not fulfil all the necessary conditions of a perfectly competitive market. Imperfect competition will cause market inefficiency when it happens, resulting in market failure. Imperfect competition is a term usually used to describe the seller's position, meaning that the level of competition between sellers falls far short of the level of competition in the market under ideal conditions. The structure of a market can significantly impact the financial performance and conduct of the firms competing within it. There is a causal relationship between structure, behaviour and performance paradigm. The characteristics of market structure can be measured by evaluating the degree of seller's market concentration to determine the nature of market competition. The degree of market power refers to the firms' ability to affect the price of a good and thus, raise the market price of the go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supply And Demand
In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris paribus, holding all else equal, in a perfect competition, competitive market, the unit price for a particular Good (economics), good, or other traded item such as Labour supply, labor or Market liquidity, liquid financial assets, will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded (at the current price) will equal the quantity supplied (at the current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity transacted. The concept of supply and demand forms the theoretical basis of modern economics. In macroeconomics, as well, the AD–AS model, aggregate demand-aggregate supply model has been used to depict how the quantity of real GDP, total output and the aggregate price level may be determined in equilibrium. Graphical representations Supply schedule A supply schedule, depicted graphically as a supply cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Money
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment. Money was historically an Emergence#Economics, emergent market phenomenon that possess intrinsic value as a Commodity money, commodity; nearly all contemporary money systems are based on unbacked fiat money without use value. Its value is consequently derived by social convention, having been declared by a government or regulatory entity to be legal tender; that is, it must be accepted as a form of payment within the boundaries of the country, for "all debts, public and private", in the case of the United States dollar. Contexts which erode public confidence, such as the circulation of counterfeit money or domestic hyperinflation, can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Welfare Function
In welfare economics, a social welfare function is a function that ranks social states (alternative complete descriptions of the society) as less desirable, more desirable, or indifferent for every possible pair of social states. Inputs of the function include any variables considered to affect the economic welfare of a society. In using welfare measures of persons in the society as inputs, the social welfare function is individualistic in form. One use of a social welfare function is to represent prospective patterns of collective choice as to alternative social states. The social welfare function provides the government with a simple guideline for achieving the optimal distribution of income. The social welfare function is analogous to the consumer theory of indifference-curve–budget constraint tangency for an individual, except that the social welfare function is a mapping of individual preferences or judgments of everyone in the society as to collective choices, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expected Utility Hypothesis
The expected utility hypothesis is a popular concept in economics that serves as a reference guide for decisions when the payoff is uncertain. The theory recommends which option rational individuals should choose in a complex situation, based on their risk appetite and preferences. The expected utility hypothesis states an agent chooses between risky prospects by comparing expected utility values (i.e. the weighted sum of adding the respective utility values of payoffs multiplied by their probabilities). The summarised formula for expected utility is U(p)=\sum u(x_k)p_k where p_k is the probability that outcome indexed by k with payoff x_k is realized, and function ''u'' expresses the utility of each respective payoff. On a graph, the curvature of u will explain the agent's risk attitude. For example, if an agent derives 0 utils from 0 apples, 2 utils from one apple, and 3 utils from two apples, their expected utility for a 50–50 gamble between zero apples and two is 0.5''u''(0 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intertemporal Choice
Intertemporal choice is the process by which people make decisions about what and how much to do at various points in time, when choices at one time influence the possibilities available at other points in time. These choices are influenced by the relative value people assign to two or more payoffs at different points in time. Most choices require decision-makers to trade off costs and benefits at different points in time. These decisions may be about saving, work effort, education, nutrition, exercise, health care and so forth. Greater preference for immediate smaller rewards has been associated with many negative outcomes ranging from lower salary to drug addiction. Since early in the twentieth century, economists have analyzed intertemporal decisions using the discounted utility model, which assumes that people evaluate the pleasures and pains resulting from a decision in much the same way that financial markets evaluate losses and gains, exponentially 'discounting' the value of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ordinal Utility
In economics, an ordinal utility function is a function representing the preferences of an agent on an ordinal scale. Ordinal utility theory claims that it is only meaningful to ask which option is better than the other, but it is meaningless to ask ''how much'' better it is or how good it is. All of the theory of consumer decision-making under conditions of certainty can be, and typically is, expressed in terms of ordinal utility. For example, suppose George tells us that "I prefer A to B and B to C". George's preferences can be represented by a function ''u'' such that: :u(A)=9, u(B)=8, u(C)=1 But critics of cardinal utility claim the only meaningful message of this function is the order u(A)>u(B)>u(C); the actual numbers are meaningless. Hence, George's preferences can also be represented by the following function ''v'': :v(A)=9, v(B)=2, v(C)=1 The functions ''u'' and ''v'' are ordinally equivalent – they represent George's preferences equally well. Ordinal utility contra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
