The Antimathematicality of Demand Curves  Cover Image

The Antimathematicality of Demand Curves
The Antimathematicality of Demand Curves

Author(s): William Barnett II, Walter E. Block
Subject(s): Economy
Published by: Стопанска академия »Д. А. Ценов«
Keywords: Demand curves; consumer behavior; mathematical economics; marginal rate of substitution; indifference; utility

Summary/Abstract: Mathematics has proven so helpful in the physical sciences such as physics that it has been improperly applied to economics. The dismal science studies purposeful human action, while purpose in the hard sciences is properly dismissed as anthropomorphic. The present paper takes the demand curve as a case in point. It demonstrates that this tool of analysis is fundamentally flawed in that it violates its own economic assumption of ceteris paribus, and also the mathematical requirement that only the proper number of variables may vary along a given graph in two-dimensional space.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 01
  • Page Range: 23-31
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: English