Utility (Economics) - Explained
What is Utility?
Written by Jason Gordon
Updated at March 26th, 2023
- Marketing, Advertising, Sales & PR
- Accounting, Taxation, and Reporting
- Professionalism & Career Development
-
Law, Transactions, & Risk Management
Government, Legal System, Administrative Law, & Constitutional Law Legal Disputes - Civil & Criminal Law Agency Law HR, Employment, Labor, & Discrimination Business Entities, Corporate Governance & Ownership Business Transactions, Antitrust, & Securities Law Real Estate, Personal, & Intellectual Property Commercial Law: Contract, Payments, Security Interests, & Bankruptcy Consumer Protection Insurance & Risk Management Immigration Law Environmental Protection Law Inheritance, Estates, and Trusts
- Business Management & Operations
- Economics, Finance, & Analytics
- Courses
What is Utility?
Utility means use or usefulness.
In economics, utility regards the extent to which a good or service satisfies a consumer’s need or want. It can be thought of as a measure of satisfaction.
Related Topics
- Self Interest
- Cost-Benefit Analysis
- Enlightened Self-Interest
- Fisher's Separation Theorem
- Ratchet Effect
- Total Utility (Economics)
- Efficiency Principle
- Expected Utility
- Subjective Theory of Value
- Positional Goods
- Utilitarianism
- Indifference Curve
- Time Preference Theory of Interest
- Incentives
- Marginal Benefit
- Diminishing Marginal Utility
- Sunk Costs
- Production Possibilities Frontier
- Law of Diminishing Returns
- Economic Efficiency
- Efficiency Theory
- Productive Efficiency
- Capacity Utilization Rate
- Allocative Efficiency
- Pareto Efficient
- Comparative Advantage
- Criticisms of the Economic Approach
- Behavioral Economics
- Normative Economics
- Positive Economics
- Invisible Hand
- Sunk cost