Distributive Efficiency - The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility

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, we 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.

Read more about this topic:  Distributive Efficiency

Famous quotes containing the words law, diminishing, marginal and/or utility:

    The law of God is a law of change, and ... when the Churches set themselves against change as such, they are setting themselves against the law of God.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    Our domestic problems are for the most part economic. We have our enormous debt to pay, and we are paying it. We have the high cost of government to diminish, and we are diminishing it. We have a heavy burden of taxation to reduce, and we are reducing it. But while remarkable progress has been made in these directions, the work is yet far from accomplished.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practised, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)