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The main use of indifference curves is in the representation of potentially observable demand patterns for individual consumers over commodity bundles. [2] Indifference curve analysis is a purely technological model which cannot be used to model consumer behaviour.
In the case of two goods and two individuals, the contract curve can be found as follows. Here refers to the final amount of good 2 allocated to person 1, etc., and refer to the final levels of utility experienced by person 1 and person 2 respectively, refers to the level of utility that person 2 would receive from the initial allocation without trading at all, and and refer to the fixed total ...
If an agent has monotone preferences which means the marginal rate of substitution of the agent's indifference curve is positive. Given two products X and Y. If the agent is strictly preferred to X, it can get the equivalent statement that X is weakly preferred to Y and Y is not weakly preferred to X.
A set of convex-shaped indifference curves displays convex preferences: Given a convex indifference curve containing the set of all bundles (of two or more goods) that are all viewed as equally desired, the set of all goods bundles that are viewed as being at least as desired as those on the indifference curve is a convex set.
The further a curve is from the origin, the greater is the level of utility. The slope of the curve (the negative of the marginal rate of substitution of X for Y) at any point shows the rate at which the individual is willing to trade off good X against good Y maintaining the same level of utility. The curve is convex to the origin as shown ...
Under the standard assumption of neoclassical economics that goods and services are continuously divisible, the marginal rates of substitution will be the same regardless of the direction of exchange, and will correspond to the slope of an indifference curve (more precisely, to the slope multiplied by −1) passing through the consumption bundle in question, at that point: mathematically, it ...
When the slope of the indifference curve is greater than the slope of the budget line, the consumer is willing to give up more of good 1 for a unit of good 2 than is required by the market. Thus, it follows that if the slope of the indifference curve is strictly greater than the slope of the budget line:
The indifference curves are also curved inwards due to diminishing marginal utility, i.e., the reduction in the utility of every additional unit as consumers consume more of the same good. The slope of the indifference curve measures the marginal rate of substitution, which can be defined as the number of units of one good needed to replace one ...