Is There a Unit of Utility?

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Ivan Moscati
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Utility Theory ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Cardinal Utility ◽  
The Future ◽  
Carl Menger ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
As If

Chapter 2 discusses how William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, and Léon Walras addressed the issue of the measurability of utility. The three founders of marginal utility theory identified measurement with unit-based measurement and, accordingly, searched for a unit of utility that could be used to assess utility ratios. The outcomes of this search were diverse and ranged from Jevons’s idea that a unit to measure utility, although not available at present, may become so in the future to Walras’s assertion that although utility cannot be measured, constructing economic theory as if it were measurable is a scientifically legitimate procedure. The final section of the chapter explains why the current notion of cardinal utility is inadequate for understanding the utility theories of Jevons, Menger, and Walras and accordingly contends that the three founders of marginal utility theory were not cardinalists in the modern sense of the term.

scholarly journals The legitimacy of increasing marginal utility in social services: The case of university examinations

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (186) ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Petar Filipic
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Utility Theory ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Diminishing Marginal Utility ◽  
The Law

The concept of utility became rightfully recognized in economic theory with the introduction of decreasing marginal utility. However a question that arises is: does an increasing consumption of goods always and without exception lead to diminishing marginal utility? It is quite possible that in some cases marginal utility of goods and services actually increases. If this fact is true, it might additionally strengthen the utility theory and make it applicable in numerous cases of economic and social reality. This paper uses the example of the utility of studying at university (i.e. the utility of university examinations), and tries to add a few arguments in favour of the statement that the law of increasing utility exists.

Nikolay Sieber in the history of prerevolutionary Russian economic thought

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
L. D. Shirokorad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Organic Synthesis ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages

This article shows how representatives of various theoretical currents in economics at different times in history interpreted the efforts of Nikolay Sieber in defending and developing Marxian economic theory and assessed his legacy and role in forming the Marxist school in Russian political economy. The article defines three stages in this process: publication of Sieber’s work dedicated to the analysis of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital and criticism of it by Russian opponents of Marxian economic theory; assessment of Sieber’s work by the narodniks, “Legal Marxists”, Georgiy Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin; the decline in interest in Sieber in light of the growing tendency towards an “organic synthesis” of the theory of marginal utility and the Marxist social viewpoint.

On behalf of Pascal: A Reply to Le Poidevin

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gäb
Keyword(s):  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
Potential Candidate ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
The Future ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
As If

When we were on the subway back from his lecture, I said to Robin: “I’m not sure there actually are any religious fictionalists.” We keep talking about them in papers and lectures, acting as if fictionalism in religion is a real possibility, but to be honest, I haven’t been able to spot one in the wild so far. The only potential candidate who comes to mind is Don Cupitt, who wrote things like: “I still pray and love God, even though I fully acknowledge that no God actually exists.”[1] Perhaps this is as fictionalist as it gets. But then again, Cupitt never explicitly declared himself a fictionalist (at least to my knowledge). Moreover, on other occasions he sounds more like an expressivist than a fictionalist, e.g. when he says: “The Christian doctrine of God just is Christian spirituality in coded form.”[2] So, if there are any actual fictionalists out there, please step forward.[1] Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion (Basic Books, 1997), 85.[2] Don Cupitt, Taking leave of God (SCM Press, 1980), 14.

scholarly journals Adopting standard variable labels solves many of the problems with sharing and reusing data

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 205979912110266
Author(s):  
Brett Buttliere
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Meta Data ◽  
Question Wording ◽  
Variable Label ◽  
The Future ◽  
Simple Step

Datasets and analysis scripts are becoming more available online, but most datasets are still unclear and difficult to use due to poor meta-data. Adopting standard variable label solves most of these problems and is easily implemented if we set the labels at the time of publication, that is, for authors to also establish standard variable labels when they establish for example, question wording. This simple step involves little effort but facilitates the sharing of datasets and analysis scripts enormously. Current initiatives to improve meta-data rely on users spending much time creating new meta-data for each variable, which is time consuming, unenjoyable, and hinders adoption. Some suggestions are made on how brief, unique, and clear variable labels can be developed, especially using the last two digits of the year the scale was published in. Standards for dataset and analysis script etiquette are the future, and the final section of the manuscript examines other easy places simple standards can save time and frustration for (re)users.

scholarly journals Some Remarks on the Report by the Commissioners appointed to investigate into the Recent Changes in the Relative Values of the Precious Metals

1891 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 190-204
Author(s):  
A. Gillies Smith
Keyword(s):  
Precious Metals ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
The Future ◽  
Value Of Money ◽  
As If

Some years have now elapsed since I had the honour of addressing you from this chair. In the paper which I then read to you I urged on our younger members the necessity of studying finance, and especially of endeavouring to form a just estimate of the value of money, and of the rate of interest which will obtain in the future, so far as that future forms an element in our calculations. Without this knowledge we shall build with insufficient materials, and in the absence of its thoughtful application to our daily work, and to our periodical investigations and valuations, we shall rear a fabric which, although it may last during our lives, and look to all appearance as if it were carefully and substantially built, will certainly, before its time, show symptoms of decay, and finally fall about the ears of too confiding policy-holders.

CAN JULIEN D’HUY’S COSMOGONIES SAVE US FROM YUVAL NOAH HARARI?

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-34
Author(s):  
Prof. Ph.D. Jacques COULARDEAU ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Circuit ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Present World ◽  
As If

Over the last two decades, we seem to have been confronted with a tremendous number of books, films, TV shows, or series that deal with the past and the present, not to mention the future, as if it were all out of time, timeless, even when it is history. We have to consider our present world as the continuation and the result of the long evolution our species has gone through since we emerged from our ancestors 300,000 years ago. Julien d’Huy is a mythologist who tries to capture the phylogeny of myths, and popular or folkloric stories that have deep roots in our past and have been produced, changed and refined over many millennia. Can he answer the question about how we have become what we are by studying the products of our past and present imagination? But confronted to the prediction of Y.N. Harari that our species will simply disappear as soon as the intelligent machines we are inventing and producing take over our bodies, brains, and minds in just a few decades, Julien d’Huy sure sounds like the antidote because at every turn in our long history we have been able, collectively, to seize the day, and evolve into a new stage in our life, both biological and mental, not to mention spirituality. Let’s enter Julien d’Huy’s book and find out the power and the energy that will enable us to short-circuit and avoid Yuval’s nightmare.

scholarly journals The Cost of Information in Dependence on the Investor Relation to the Risk

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-85
Author(s):  
Simona Hašková
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Utility Theory ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Investment Decisions ◽  
Reliable Estimate ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Cardinal Utility ◽  
Finance Theory ◽  
The Cost

Abstract The contribution sets simple mathematic models describing and explaining the way of behavior of various types of investors (the private and institutionalized ones). The models come from the cardinal utility theory which is used for explaining the connection between the subjective relationship towards risk and some pathologic phenomenon of finance theory (for example the moral hazard question of institutionalized investors) and takes into account the decision making of both ordinary people and professional investors. A reliable estimate of the economic surroundings where the investment should run contributes significantly to a quality of the particular investment decisions. The article contributes to a quality of the investment decision by the original and primary approach to pricing information that lowers the uncertainty in occurrences of the relevant scenarios of the project’s development. At the conclusion there is shown how the shift of the decision breaking point shapes the amount of the acceptable price of the information.

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