Economic Wants

Abstract

An activity is productive in the economic sense only if it makes use of scarce resources in such a way as to satisfy wants. A commodity capable of satisfying wants is said to have ‘utility’, and the terms on which it can be exchanged for other commodities depend both on its utility and on its scarcity. The connection between utility and market demand is discussed in the first extract from Alfred Marshall’s ‘Principles of Economics’. (Marshall, one of the greatest English economists, was Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge from 1885 to 1908, and the ‘Principles’ were first published in 1890.)