Marginal concepts
In
Marginality
Constraints are conceptualized as a border or margin.[1] The location of the margin for any individual corresponds to his or her endowment, broadly conceived to include opportunities. This endowment is determined by many things including physical laws (which constrain how forms of energy and matter may be transformed), accidents of nature (which determine the presence of natural resources), and the outcomes of past decisions made both by others and by the individual himself or herself.
A value that holds true given particular constraints is a
Some important marginal concepts
The
The
The marginal rate of substitution is the rate of substitution that is the least favorable rate, at the margin, at which an agent is willing to exchange units of one good or service for units of another.
A
The term “marginal cost” may refer to an opportunity cost at the margin, or more narrowly to marginal pecuniary cost — that is to say marginal cost measured by forgone cash flow.
Other marginal concepts include (but are not limited to):
- marginal physical product (sometimes also known as “marginal product”)
- marginal rate of transformation, the rate at which one output or result must be sacrificed in order to increase another output or result
- marginal revenue product
- marginal propensity to save and consume
- marginal tax rate
- marginal efficiency of capital
Marginalism is the use of marginal concepts to explain economic phenomena.
The related concept of elasticity is the ratio of the incremental percentage change in one variable with respect to an incremental percentage change in another variable.
References
- ^ Wicksteed, Philip Henry; The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910), Bk I Ch 2 and elsewhere.
- ^ a b von Wieser, Friedrich; Über den Ursprung und die Hauptgesetze des wirtschaftlichen Wertes [The Nature and Essence of Theoretical Economics] (1884), p. 128.