工商管理专业外语翻译.docVIP

The concert of utility效用概念 Economists first began to analyze consumer behavior over a century ago when it was fashionable in psychological circles, to assert that much of human behavior could be explained by people’s desire to realize as much “pleasure” and to avoid as much “pain” as possible. The pleasure-pain doctrine was quickly borrowed by economists and applied to the sphere of consumer expenditures in what became the first systematic theory of motivated consumer behavior; the basic economic thesis was that rational consumers would ,quite intentionally ,manage their purchases of goods and services so as to realize the greatest possibleamountofoveralltotal“satisfaction”.Economistslabeledthewant-satisfying power of goods and services as “utility”. 经济学家最开始研究消费者行为学是在一个多世纪前当心理学界流行一种说法：人们的很多行为可以解释为人们为了尽可能获得更多的幸福、规避更多的痛苦而做的努力。这种苦乐心跳很快便被经济学家借用了并运用于消费者的消费行为中并使之成为解释消费者行为的第一个系统理论：基础的经济论点是理智的消费者会有意识的管理他们对于商品和服务的消费来时总体满意度最大。经济学家把人们对商品和服务的需求与满足称为“效用”。 How markets function市场如何发挥作用A critical part of examining the market for a product is the structure of competition—whether there are many or few sellers in the industry. The terms “many” and “few” are delineated not so much by the numbers of firms as by the competitive interaction among firms. There are “many” sellers of a product when no one firm has a big enough volume of business or enjoys high enough standing as a market leader for the remaining firms to react to its action. Each firm is small enough and insignificant enough in the context of the whole market that it is virtually an anonymous entity, hidden by sheer numbers from the watchful eyes of other firms. In contrast, we say there are “few” sellers of a product whenever the actions of any one firms will be noticed and reacted to by rival sellers. “Few” means few enough so that firms find it imperative to follow each other’s moves closely. Fewness of sellers also means that each firm is large relative to the size of the market in which it operates; often, when firms ar