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Economists distinguish between total utility and marginal utility. Total utility is the utility of an alternative, an entire consumption bundle or situation in life. The rate of change of utility from changing the quantity of one good consumed is termed the marginal utility of that good. Marginal utility therefore measures the slope of the ...
The marginal utility, or the change in subjective value above the existing level, diminishes as gains increase. [17] As the rate of commodity acquisition increases, the marginal utility decreases. If commodity consumption continues to rise, the marginal utility will eventually reach zero, and the total utility will be at its maximum.
Utility maximization was first developed by utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In microeconomics, the utility maximization problem is the problem consumers face: "How should I spend my money in order to maximize my utility?" It is a type of optimal decision problem.
The main problem for total utilitarianism is the "mere addition paradox", which argues that a likely outcome of following total utilitarianism is a future where there is a large number of people with very low utility values. Parfit terms this "the repugnant conclusion", believing it to be intuitively undesirable. [4]
This is equivalent to assuming Local non-satiation (an increase in the consumption of either good increases, rather than decreases, total utility). The counterfactual to this assumption is assuming a bliss point. If utility U = f(x, y), U, in the third dimension, does not have a local maximum for any x and y values.) The negative slope of the ...
In economics, exponential discounting is a specific form of the discount function, used in the analysis of choice over time (with or without uncertainty).Formally, exponential discounting occurs when total utility is given by
The theory of marginal utility, which is based on the subjective theory of value, says that the price at which an object trades in the market is determined neither by how much labor was exerted in its production nor on how useful it is on the whole. Rather, its price is determined by its marginal utility. The marginal utility of a good is ...
Some utilitarian moral theories are concerned with quantities called the "total utility" and "average utility" of collectives, and characterize morality in terms of favoring the utility or happiness of others with disregard for one's own. These notions can be related to, but are distinct from, VNM-utility: