0 Or Ro .. the HISTORY and DEVELOPMENT of CONSUMER's
0 or ro .. THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF CONSUMER'S SURPLUS AND ITS RELEVANCE AS A MEASURE OF WELFARE CHANGE THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE By Richard Murray Anderson, Jr., B. B. A. Denton, Texas August, 1975 Anderson, Richard Murray Jr., The History anadDevelo- M of Consumer's Surplus and Its Relevance as a Measure of Welfare Change, Master of Science (Economics), August, 1975, 118 pages, 20 figures, bibliography, 66 titles. The thesis analyzes the validity of consumer's surplus as a measure of welfare change. The analysis begins by examining the chronological development of the concept. Once an understanding of consumer's surplus is formulated, an evaluation of its use in modern ad hoc problems can be undertaken. Chapter II and III discuss the development of consumer's surplus from Classical economics to its modern reformulations, The concept's application to different problems is discussed in Chapter IV. Chapter V and VI deal with the intergration of consumer's surplus and the compensation principle. The primary conclusion is that the Laspeyres measure, in combination with the compensation test, provides a defini- tive measure of welfare change in a limited situation. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ., ,0 Page 0 0 0 0 00 00 0iv 0 0 0 Chapter I0 INTRODUCTIONIO,, ,0,,0, *,,,,, ,,,, II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSUMER'S SURPLUS, . , * 7 III. MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF CONSUMER'S SURPLUS . 36 IV. MODERN AD HOC APPLICATIONS OF HYPOTHETICAL INCOME VARIATIONS., .,. *.. .. ... 64 V.
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