Economic Value in Aitch-Two-Oh
by ilene - September 5th, 2010 7:25 pm
Economic Value in Aitch-Two-Oh
Courtesy of Tim at The Psy-Fi Blog
Odd Water
"The world’s supply of fresh water is running out. Already one person in five has no access to safe drinking water. "
Well, so says the BBC. But water’s an odd thing. You can’t live without it but it’s not particularly valuable. In fact the stuff in your faucet is free, it’s just the cost of getting it there that we pay for.
Water is, perhaps, the pre-eminent example of the old truism that price is what you pay but value is what you get. Only thing is, how do you value something that has no market price? Fortunately teams of highly trained thinkers have been working on this, just so we know the price of everything even if we’re not willing to pay it.
Paradoxical Water
While we absolutely require water every day to survive we can live a lifetime without diamonds, although don’t tell my mother. Yet water’s effectively free while if you want a diamond you need to pay an arm and a leg. This is a paradox that Adam Smith noted:
“Nothing is more useful than water; but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it”.
As ever, there’s a difference between price and value and that makes all the world of difference. Especially if you’re thirsty. Michael Haneman gives a fabulous review of the economic principles surrounding the use of water in The Value of Water, which we’ll only summarise here, but it’s a great starting point for anyone wondering why intangibles are invaluable.
Marginal Value
Basically the difference between value and price is a pretty important one for investors and economists because it makes clear that the economic value of something isn’t the same as its market price. There are things that have economic value that price doesn’t accurately measure and this fact makes investment analysis rather more tricky than simple share price followers would like.
The critical key to understanding the difference in valuation between water and diamonds is the idea of marginal value. If you have twelve litres of water to hand – which…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.