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The Marginal Value Theorem is an optimality model that describes the strategy that maximizes gain per unit time in systems where resources, and thus rate of returns, decrease with time. [2] The model weighs benefits and costs and is used to predict giving up time and giving up density.
Figure 3. Marginal value theorem shown graphically. The marginal value theorem is a type of optimality model that is often applied to optimal foraging. This theorem is used to describe a situation in which an organism searching for food in a patch must decide when it is economically favorable to leave.
To construct an optimality model, the behavior must first be clearly defined. Then, descriptions of how the costs and benefits vary with the way the behavior is performed must be obtained. [1] Examples of benefits and costs include direct fitness measures like offspring produced, change in lifespan, time spent or gained, or energy spent and gained.
A market can be said to have allocative efficiency if the price of a product that the market is supplying is equal to the marginal value consumers place on it, and equals marginal cost. In other words, when every good or service is produced up to the point where one more unit provides a marginal benefit to consumers less than the marginal cost ...
Or, where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. This level of effort maximizes the economic profit, or rent, of the resource being utilized. It usually corresponds to an effort level lower than that of maximum sustainable yield.
As already mentioned, group foraging brings both costs and benefits to the members of that group. Some of the benefits of group foraging include being able to capture larger prey, [33] being able to create aggregations of prey, [34] being able to capture prey that are difficult or dangerous and most importantly reduction of predation threat. [27]
Marginal revenue equals zero when the total revenue curve has reached its maximum value. An example would be a scheduled airline flight. The marginal costs of flying one more passenger on the flight are negligible until all the seats are filled. The airline would maximize profit by filling all the seats.
The sum of the marginal benefits represent the aggregate willingness to pay or aggregate demand. The marginal cost is, under competitive market conditions, the supply for public goods. Hence the Samuelson condition can be thought of as a generalization of supply and demand concepts from private to public goods.