Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: A statistical method for measuring "marginal utility" and testing the justice of a progressive income tax / Irving Fisher

Collection:: Economics Books

182 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK (e.g., Case 1) is worth the same subjectively in every direction, so that we need, in each Case, only one designation, such as W,, for its marginal want for a dollar, that is its want-for-one-more dollar. Thus W, indicates the want-for-one-more dollar’s worth of food, as well as for one more dollar’s worth of housing or for one more dollar’s worth of anything else. (b) Comparability. Wants of different groups of individuals are assumed to be practically comparable. The behavior of the average family under varying circumstances, as exemplified in its budget and published in statistical tables according to income, size of family, character of workmen, etc. is assumed to register, and be adjusted to, the average intensities of the wants of the average families recorded in those budget tables. Thus we are permitted to compare Wy and W» for instance, in the same equation, although they relate to two different groups of people, one an average of many families in Oddland, and the other an average of many families in Evenland. (¢) Dependence of each want exclusively on the provision for that want. Having thus acquired the right (from assump- tion a) to employ a single uniform Wi and a single uniform IW, instead of a multitude of unequal magnitudes, one for each use of money, and (from assumption b) to compare said W; and Ws, as applying to different people, we next assume that equal increments added to equal rations of food are equally wanted by families of equal size and character. This implies that the want for a given small increment, or improvement in quantity and quality, of a given ration (say of the common ration of Cases 1 and 2) depends exclusively on that ration. Thus, it will be the same for an average family of a given size and sharacter in Oddland as it is for an average family of the same size and character in Evenland, the income of these two average families being different and only so related as to have led them ‘0 choose substantially the same ration. It follows, since these equal increments of this ration are equally desirable, that one more dollar’s worth of each ration will be desired in exact proportion to the amount which the dollar will purchase in the two markets. In other words Ww, _ VF: Wa 1/7;

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