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 is similar to the law of diminishing returns which states that as the amount of one factor of production increases as all other factors of production are held the same, the marginal return (extra output gained by adding an extra unit) decreases.
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).