This document outlines the agenda for an economics lecture on utility and choice. Today's lecture will introduce the course and cover utility, assumptions about preferences like transitivity and completeness, indifference curves representing combinations of goods that make a consumer equally happy, and the marginal rate of substitution as the slope of the indifference curve. Volunteers Frank Mackey and Emmett McDonagh will assist with a demonstration of diminishing marginal utility and choosing between alternatives.

1. EC4004
Lecture 2
Utility Choice

2. Yesterday
Introduction to the Course

3. Today
Utility Choice

4. We can represent individual
choices amongst competing
alternatives using indifference
curves budget constraints

5. Volunteers
Frank Mackey
Emmett McDonagh

6. Utility
Utility is the satisfaction a
person receives from
their economic activities.

7. Assumptions
• Ceteris Paribus (holding things constant)
• Utility Function

8. Function Set B
Set A

9. Assumptions
about
Preferences
Transitivity
Completeness
More Preferred to Less

10. Diminishing Marginal
Utility:
Demo