The world's funniest economics stories

Chapter 36 Happiness is not built with money (3)
In addition, when choosing a marriage partner, the psychological "good match" is also very important.When two people are together, if they can coordinate with each other to the best state psychologically, then their marriage with a common language will inevitably be very happy.

Rational consumption refers to the consumption that consumers pursue according to the principle of maximizing utility under the condition of consumption ability.From a psychological point of view, rational consumption means that consumers make reasonable purchase decisions based on their own learning and perception. When the material is not sufficient, rational consumers psychologically pursue cheap, high-quality and durable products.

7. Find someone I love, or find someone who loves me--consumer surplus

"The person who loves me is infatuated with me, but I am willing to be sad for the person I love all my life; the person who loves me gives everything for me, but I cry and break my heart for the person I love." A song "Love Me" "People and the People I Love" sang the contradictions and entanglements of countless men and women in the face of love.

"Find someone who loves me or someone I love?" This topic has always confused many men and women, and there has never been a standard answer to this discussion.On this topic, Century Jiayuan website once conducted a large survey.

After a week's investigation by Jiayuan, the results showed that the positive side "find someone who loves me to marry" nearly doubled the support rate, which far outperformed the negative side "find someone I love to marry".

Netizens who insist on marrying someone who loves me account for nearly two-thirds of the voters. Most of these people think that it is easy to find someone they love, but if they don’t love me, then they will be too tired. If this is the case, I might as well find someone who loves me and marry me.Furthermore, after a long time, maybe I can still fall in love with each other.

Although it is a minority to choose the person I love to marry, their reasons are basically the same and firm.They firmly believe in true love. If they really can't find true love, they would rather be alone for a lifetime.At the same time, these people also feel that being able to pay for their loved ones is a kind of happiness in itself.If the other party feels it, they will also fall in love with themselves. Even if they don't fall in love with themselves, it is a happy happiness that they will pay for the one they love.

Consumer surplus is the difference between the price a consumer is willing to pay for a good and the actual price he pays for that good.

Regarding marriage and love, some people say that when you fall in love, you must find someone you love, and when you get married, you must find someone who loves you, so that you can be happy.This statement itself is understandable, but is it true that you will be happy if you find someone who loves you and get married?
When doing business, bargaining is to minimize the other party's surplus and maximize one's own surplus.The same is true for love. Although love cannot be described as a transaction, it does contain a similar consumer surplus—the lover's surplus.

In love, the two lovers are constantly switching roles: sometimes you are a producer and the other is a consumer; sometimes the other is a producer and you are a consumer.When you pay for love, you should not keep the producer surplus, because this itself is a two-way dynamic process.If your contribution is discounted, then you lose the happiness you paid, and the other party loses the happiness you got.This is a double loss.When the roles are switched, the other party may have doubts and is unwilling to give wholeheartedly, so the two parties fall into a vicious circle.

But that doesn't mean it's always right to give in love.Usually, if you give your heart, you can reap true love, so two people don't have to and shouldn't calculate gains and losses.

Love is a complex art, and a shrewd businessman may not be equally successful emotionally.A golden wedding that remains in love after 50 years is no easier to run than a 50-year-old evergreen business.

When love goes through time, it will gradually become dull.It is often said that managing love requires constant romance and surprises.In fact, it is an interaction that creates a consumer surplus.When the lives of two people become more and more regular, the remaining interaction of the first love gradually disappears.If love evolves into family affection, it will be a little warm, but also a little regretful.The vitality of love may lie in the frequency and depth of consumer surplus exchange between two people.Therefore, to manage love, we must start from the management surplus.

Marginal profit reflects the increase in revenue that can be gained by increasing product sales.The sales unit price minus the marginal cost is the marginal profit, and the marginal profit refers to the profit increased by increasing the unit output.Accounting profit is obtained by subtracting accounting costs from operating income of an enterprise.According to my country's accounting system, there are concepts such as sales profit, total profit and after-tax profit.Sales profit is the balance of sales revenue after deducting costs, expenses, various turnover taxes and surcharges; total profit is the total profit and loss realized by an enterprise within a certain period of time; after-tax profit is the profit after deducting payable income tax from total profit of an enterprise.

8 Men are afraid of entering the wrong line of work, women are afraid of marrying the wrong man——adverse selection
Ms. Zhang is 25 years old and has reached the age of marriage. She and her boyfriend have been in love for many years, and the relationship between the two parties is very good.Although his boyfriend has asked her many times to marry her, she has been unable to make a decision on the important matter of marriage.

Ms. Zhang has always had this concept: Men should work hard outside, and women should be good wives and mothers at home.The same is true of many married friends around her. Their husbands are all successful in their careers, and their wives are also doing a good job as a good wife and mother, so their lives are happy and complete.

However, in reality, Ms. Zhang is distressed about her situation.Because she is a strong woman in her career, she is already a director of a well-known company at the age of 25, and she is very likely to have opportunities for advancement as her age and work ability increase. It can be said that she is so-called a fish in water in her career.But her boyfriend is different, he is just an ordinary clerk in a factory, and his work ability is mediocre, and his career development is not as good as hers.

This is one of the important reasons for preventing Ms. Zhang from getting married. She is afraid that after marriage, she will shame her boyfriend with mediocre qualifications because of her ability, which will hit his self-esteem and cause family tragedies.

Not long ago, she met a friend in economics and told her about her troubles. After hearing this, the friend advised her to think in a mode of adverse selection, breaking the traditional "men are afraid of entering the wrong line, women Afraid of marrying the wrong man”, her boyfriend only needs to love her and be loyal to her, and she can understand her boyfriend, and will not look down on him because the other party’s status is not as good as hers, so that no tragedy will happen .

After hearing this, Ms. Zhang suddenly realized, so she married her boyfriend two months later, and her married life was also very happy.

Because of a friend's words, Ms. Zhang in the story changed her inherent prejudice and finally gained happiness. This is the importance of "adverse selection".

Adverse selection is a vocabulary with rich meanings in economics. One definition of it refers to the phenomenon that the inferior products produced by the information asymmetry between the two parties and the decline in market prices drive out the high-quality products, and then the average quality of market-traded products decreases.

In real economic life, there are some phenomena that are inconsistent with the routine.Normally, if the price of a commodity is lowered, the demand for that commodity will increase; if the price of a commodity is raised, the quantity of that commodity supplied will increase.However, due to incomplete information and opportunistic behavior, sometimes consumers will not make the choice to increase purchases when the price of goods is lowered, and producers will not increase supply when prices are raised.Therefore, it is called "adverse selection".

In the short story mentioned above, if Ms. Zhang did not use adverse selection, but used ordinary thinking methods to make choices, then she would definitely give up marrying her boyfriend, and her happiness would be greatly reduced, and even The tragedy happened because she used adverse selection to avoid the tragedy.

The adverse selection model was published in 1970 by George Akerlof in a paper titled "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and Market Mechanisms", which is recognized as the most important seminal document in information economics.The adverse selection theory proposed by George Akerlof in this paper reveals a seemingly simple but actually very profound economic truth.

Information asymmetry means that each person in a transaction has different information.In general, sellers have more information about traded items than buyers, but the reverse can also exist.

(End of this chapter)