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Basic Economic Paradigms : Exchange And Production Paradigms

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Scarcity shows us the basic economic problem, where humans have unlimited wants, yet there are only finite amount of resources. Therefore, there are not enough resources to fulfill these unlimited needs. One real world example of a scarce resource is coal. Coal is a resource used for fossil fuel and is a combustible rock. Coal is used for “electricity generation, steel production, cement manufacturing and as a liquid fuel”. As you can see there are many uses for coal, thus there will be companies needing as much coal as they can get, however there is only a finite amount for everyone, therefore it must be allocated correctly in order to satisfy those needing coal for self interest and their own objectives.

There are two fundamental economic paradigms: exchange and production paradigms. The exchange paradigm. The exchange paradigm is used to explain neoclassical economics, which tells us that individuals will only want to maximise their utility or profit in relation to the rational choice theory. The exchange paradigm assumes that we have a number of individuals that have resources, where each resource has a set price which cannot be influenced. Furthermore, these individuals have a limit on their budget (which is the price of their own resources added together). As these individuals will act rationally, they will want maximise their utility up to the budget limit by exchanging their resources with other individual, until the point of a general equilibrium where every

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