Mary Jane Sudekum, Pharm.D., and Lee C. Vermeulen, M.S. Key Words: therapeutic interchange, guidelines, drug policies, drug. procedures, pharmacy and therapeutics committee, patient care, cost-effective. therapy, American College of Clinical Pharmacy, ACCP, position statement.
The law of diminishing marginal utility states that: As a consumer consumes more and more units of a specific commodity, the utility from the successive units goes on diminishing. Mr. H. Gossen, a German economist, was first to explain this law in 1854.
Assume the consumer utility function is defined by, where U is consumer utility, x and y are goods. Then the marginal rate of substitution can be computed via partial differentiation, as follows. Also, note that: where is the marginal utility with respect to good x and is the marginal utility with respect to good y.or example, if the MRS xy = 2, the consumer will give up 2 units of Y to obtain 1 additional unit of X. As one moves down a (standardly convex) indifference curve, the marginal rate of substitution decreases (as measured by the absolute value of the slope of the indifference curve, which decreases).