The Role of Diminishing Marginal Utility in the Ordinal and Cardinal Utility Theories

@article{Lin2019TheRO,
  title={The Role of Diminishing Marginal Utility in the Ordinal and Cardinal Utility Theories},
  author={Chung‐Cheng Lin and Shi‐Shu Peng},
  journal={ERN: Other Macroeconomics: Employment},
  year={2019}
}
We illustrate the role of the law of diminishing marginal utility in the two main modern utility theories, the ordinal and cardinal utility theories, using a generalised total utility function. In short, the ordinal utility theory, in which utility is immeasurable, must abandon the law of diminishing marginal utility; the cardinal utility theory, although able to retain this law, suffers from keeping the unrealistic view of utility measurability, which Samuelson criticises as “infinitely… 
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2 Citations

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The model in which an individual maximizes the ordinal or cardinal total utility subject to her budget constraint has long been the paradigm of individual choice theory in economics. The ordinal…

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