utility

utility, in economics, the determination of the prices of goods and services.

The modern industrial economy is characterized by a high degree of interdependence of its parts. The supplier of components or raw materials, for example, must deliver the desired quantities of his products at the right moment and in the desired specifications. In economies such as those of western Europe, North America, and Japan, the coordination of these activities is done through the price system. The relative prices of the various inputs (e.g., labour, materials, machinery) tend to determine the proportions in which they will be used. Prices also affect the relative outputs of the various final products, and they determine who will consume them. Value theory, therefore, studies the structure of these decisions, analyzes the influence of prices, and examines the efficiency of the resulting allocation of resources. Value theory is also applied by business firms and government agencies in their decisions that relate to pricing and the allocation of resources.

Modern value theory began with Adam Smith (1776), David Ricardo (1817), and a number of other writers, who are generally lumped together as the classical school. These writers sought to explain pricing primarily on the basis of cost of production. That is, if commodity A costs twice as much to produce as commodity B, the price of A will be pushed toward a level twice as high as that of B. If this were not the case—if, for example, A sold for three times the price of B—then the greater profitability of investment in A would cause its production to increase and drive down its price, while the production of B would decline, thus raising its price. Prices would finally be driven to the 2:1 ratio of the costs of production.

The classical economists were well aware of the oversimplification in this explanation, but, as with most theoretical analysis, its strength lay in the amount it was able to explain with a very simple model. (It is highly misleading to interpret the classical analysis literally, as a picture of its authors’ views of the complex world of reality.) It was soon recognized, however, that the cost-of-production analysis considered only part of the relevant problem. Since cost depends on the quantity produced (e.g., costs per unit may decline as production of an item increases), the analysis must take into account the demand for the product. The analysis of demand was made possible by the theory of utility, developed by H.H. Gossen in Germany (1854), Karl Menger in Austria (1871), Léon Walras in France (1874–77), and W.S. Jevons in England (1871).

The role of utility analysis in value theory will be discussed later. It need only be added at this point that modern value theory, following the lead of the English economist Alfred Marshall (Principles of Economics, 8th ed., 1920), considers prices to be determined simultaneously by cost and demand considerations. The analysis also recognizes the complex interdependencies in the system, with demands and supplies of various commodities affecting one another.

The fact that goods have value can be ascribed ultimately to the limitations in the world’s material endowment. Man does not have all the arable land, petroleum, or platinum that he would like; their use must be rationed. That is why goods have prices; if they were available in unlimited supply they would be free. Price usually serves as the rationing device whereby their use is kept down to the available supply.

Resources can be said to be scarce in both an absolute and in a relative sense: the surface of the Earth is finite, imposing absolute scarcity; but the scarcity that concerns economists is the relative scarcity of resources in different uses. Materials used for one purpose cannot at the same time be used for other purposes; if the quantity of an input is limited, the increased use of it in one manufacturing process must cause it to become scarcer in other uses.

The cost of a product in terms of money may not measure its true cost to society. The true cost of, say, the construction of a supersonic jet is the value of the schools and refrigerators that will never be built as a result. Every act of production uses up some of society’s available resources; it means the foregoing of an opportunity to produce something else. In deciding how to use resources most effectively to satisfy the wants of the community, this opportunity cost must ultimately be taken into account.

In a market economy the relationship between the price of a good and the quantity supplied depends on the cost of making it, and that cost, ultimately, is the cost of not making other goods. The market mechanism enforces this relationship. In the first instance, the cost of, say, a pair of shoes is the price of the leather, the labour, the fuel, and other elements used up in producing them. But the price of these inputs, in turn, depends on what they can produce elsewhere—if the handbags that can be produced with the leather are valued very highly by consumers, the price of leather will be bid up correspondingly.