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Welfare Economics
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate well-being (welfare) at the aggregate (economy-wide) level. Attempting to apply the principles of welfare economics gives rise to the field of public economics, the study of how government might intervene to improve social welfare. Welfare economics also provides the theoretical foundations for particular instruments of public economics, including cost–benefit analysis, while the combination of welfare economics and insights from behavioral economics has led to the creation of a new subfield, behavioral welfare economics. The field of welfare economics is associated with two fundamental theorems. The first states that given certain assumptions, competitive markets produce ( Pareto) efficient outcomes; it captures the logic of Adam Smith's invisible hand. The second states that given further restrictions, any Pareto efficient outcome can be supported as a competitive market equilibrium. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microeconomics
Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the national economy as whole, which is studied in macroeconomics. One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics shows conditions under which free markets lead to desirable allocations. It also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results. While microeconomics focuses on firms and individuals, macroeconomics focuses on the sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth, inflation, and unemployment and with national policies relating to these issues. Microeconomics also deal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Marshall
Alfred Marshall (26 July 1842 – 13 July 1924) was an English economist, and was one of the most influential economists of his time. His book '' Principles of Economics'' (1890) was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, marginal utility, and costs of production into a coherent whole. He is known as one of the founders of neoclassical economics. Life and career Marshall was born at Bermondsey in London, second son of William Marshall (1812–1901), clerk and cashier at the Bank of England, and Rebecca (1817–1878), daughter of butcher Thomas Oliver, from whom, on her mother's death, she inherited property. William Marshall was a devout strict Evangelical, "author of an Evangelical epic in a sort of Anglo-Saxon language of his own invention which found some favour in its appropriate circles" and of a tract titled ''Men's Rights and Women's Duties''. Marshall had two brothers and two sisters; a cousin was the econ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marginal Rate Of Substitution
In economics, the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) is the rate at which a consumer can give up some amount of one good in exchange for another good while maintaining the same level of utility. At equilibrium consumption levels (assuming no externalities), marginal rates of substitution are identical. The marginal rate of substitution is one of the three factors from marginal productivity, the others being marginal rates of transformation and marginal productivity of a factor. As the slope of indifference curve 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 is the implicit derivative. MRS of X for Y is the amount of Y which a consumer ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indifference Curve
In economics, an indifference curve connects points on a graph representing different quantities of two goods, points between which a consumer is ''indifferent''. That is, any combinations of two products indicated by the curve will provide the consumer with equal levels of utility, and the consumer has no preference for one combination or bundle of goods over a different combination on the same curve. One can also refer to each point on the indifference curve as rendering the same level of utility (satisfaction) for the consumer. In other words, an indifference curve is the locus of various points showing different combinations of two goods providing equal utility to the consumer. Utility is then a device to represent preferences rather than something from which preferences come. The main use of indifference curves is in the representation of potentially observable demand patterns for individual consumers over commodity bundles. There are infinitely many indifference curves: one ... [...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 contrasts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Income Distribution
In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes economic inequality which is a concern in almost all countries around the world. Classical economists such as Adam Smith (1723–1790), Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), and David Ricardo (1772–1823) concentrated their attention on factor income-distribution, that is, the distribution of income between the primary factors of production (land, labour and capital). Modern economists have also addressed issues of income distribution, but have focused more on the distribution of income across individuals and households. Important theoretical and policy concerns include the balance between income inequality and economic growth, and their often inverse relationship. The Lorenz curve can represent the distribution of income within a society. The Lore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kaldor–Hicks Efficiency
A Kaldor–Hicks improvement, named for Nicholas Kaldor and John Hicks, is an economic re-allocation of resources among people that captures some of the intuitive appeal of a Pareto improvement, but has less stringent criteria and is hence applicable to more circumstances. A re-allocation is a Kaldor–Hicks improvement if those that are made better off could hypothetically compensate those that are made worse off and lead to a Pareto-improving outcome. The compensation does not actually have to occur (there is no presumption in favor of status-quo) and thus, a Kaldor–Hicks improvement can in fact leave some people worse off. A situation is said to be Kaldor–Hicks efficient, or equivalently is said to satisfy the Kaldor–Hicks criterion, if no potential Kaldor–Hicks improvement from that situation exists. If an outcome is the highest it could possibly be, it is called a Hicks-optimal outcome. A Hicks optimal outcome is always Pareto efficient. Explanation A reallocatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Kaldor
Nicholas Kaldor, Baron Kaldor (12 May 1908 – 30 September 1986), born Káldor Miklós, was a Cambridge economist in the post-war period. He developed the "compensation" criteria called Kaldor–Hicks efficiency for welfare comparisons (1939), derived the cobweb model, and argued for certain regularities observable in economic growth, which are called Kaldor's growth laws. Kaldor worked alongside Gunnar Myrdal to develop the key concept Circular Cumulative Causation, a multicausal approach where the core variables and their linkages are delineated. Both Myrdal and Kaldor examine circular relationships, where the interdependencies between factors are relatively strong, and where variables interlink in the determination of major processes. Gunnar Myrdal got the concept from Knut Wicksell and developed it alongside Nicholas Kaldor when they worked together at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Myrdal concentrated on the social provisioning aspect of development, while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hicks
Sir John Richards Hicks (8 April 1904 – 20 May 1989) was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economics were his statement of consumer demand theory in microeconomics, and the IS–LM model (1937), which summarised a Keynesian view of macroeconomics. His book ''Value and Capital'' (1939) significantly extended general-equilibrium and value theory. The compensated demand function is named the Hicksian demand function in memory of him. In 1972 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (jointly) for his pioneering contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory. Early life Hicks was born in 1904 in Warwick, England, and was the son of Dorothy Catherine (Stephens) and Edward Hicks, a journalist at a local newspaper. He was educated at Clifton College (1917–1922) and at Balliol College, Oxford (1922– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto ( , , , ; born Wilfried Fritz Pareto; 15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923) was an Italian polymath (civil engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher). He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices. He was also responsible for popularising the use of the term "elite" in social analysis. He introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He was also the first to discover that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power law probability distribution. The Pareto principle was named after him, and it was built on his observations that 80% of the wealth in Italy belonged to about 20% of the population. He also contributed to the fields of sociology and mathematics. According to the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson: Biography Pareto was born of an e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_February_1747.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747ref name="Johnson2012" /> – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalising of homosex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Distributive Efficiency
In welfare economics, distributive efficiency occurs when goods and services are received by those who have the greatest need for them. Abba Lerner first proposed the idea of distributive efficiency in his 1944 book ''The Economics of Control''. The law of diminishing marginal utility The concept of distributive efficiency is based on the law of diminishing marginal utility. According to this economic law, as a person gets more to spend, he will buy things that give him less and less utility. For example, if a person is given a gift certificate for a music download (and has no way to resell the certificate), he will use the gift certificate to purchase the song he will enjoy the most. If he is given another, he will buy his second favorite song. The process continues as long as the man keeps getting certificates for downloads. Each additional song the person buys is slightly less desirable than the one before. Diminishing utility and society Lerner applied the concept of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
