Marginal Cost in the New Economy

Marginal Cost in the New Economy outlines a bold new approach for resolving a wide variety of public policy debates. It proposes that a single standard -- marginal cost methodology -- be adopted to replace the haphazard arrays of methods and techniques currently employed to measure the costs and benefits of disputed policy issues. The book's objective is to substitute a single set of harmonious principles for the inconsistent, erratic, and often self-serving approaches to cost-benefit determination currently applied to numerous public issues. The author explains how this methodology would provide an effective starting point for evaluating issues ranging from the relatively simple, such as school vouchers, to the more complex, including prescription drug prices and anti-trust questions. The book also includes a review of the economic requirements of the New Economy as contrasted with traditional microeconomics, which makes it equally useful for courses in microeconomics, public policy, or price theory.

Roger L. Conkling

Chapter 1 The Challenge to Orthodoxy; Chapter 2 Reflections on the Summers Thesis; Chapter 3 Marginal Costs and Marginalism; Chapter 4 Achieving Economic Efficiency in Regulated Pricing, Alfred E. Kahn; Chapter 5 School Vouchers; Chapter 6 Special Cases; Chapter 7 Antitrust; Chapter 8 Concluding Thoughts;