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Utility maximizing
- Intro Lesson: a10:23
- Intro Lesson: b14:12
Utility maximizing
Lessons
Knowing a person’s budget line and utility, how can we maximize the utility? There are 2 methods.
Using a Spreadsheet
Assuming all income is used,
- Write out the possible combinations of goods from the specified income.
- Write out the total utility gained from each number of good.
- Add the utilities together from both goods
- Find out which combination of good gives the most total utility.
Choosing the Margin
Recall that we learned about finding the marginal utility last section. We can put it to use this section!
Assuming all income is used, the consumer maximizes their utility between two goods when
Where:
- MUx is the marginal utility of good x.
- Px is the marginal utility of good x.
- MUy is the marginal utility of good y.
- Py is the marginal utility of good y.
- IntroductionUtility Maximizing Overview:a)Using a Spreadsheet
- List all the possible combination of goods
- Find the total utility of each
- Add the utilities
- Find the highest total utility
- An Example
b)Choosing the Margin- Marginal utility per dollar of good x
- Marginal utility per dollar of good y
- Setting them equal
- An Example