Fundamentals
Price Elasticity of Demand: What It Measures and How to Interpret It
Price elasticity of demand compares percentage changes in price and quantity demanded. This guide explains its formula, ranges, and limits.
Publication contributor
Articles by Daniel Sardá · Page 5
This archive contains published site articles attributed to Daniel Sardá. The separate Thinkers section contains historical intellectual profiles, not publication contributors.
Fundamentals
Network Effects: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Matter
Network effects arise when the value of a good or service changes with the number of people who use it. Understanding them helps explain the growth of networks and platforms without confusing size, quality, and market power.
Fundamentals
Endowment Effect: Why We Value What We Already Own More
Owning a good can raise the price we require to part with it. The endowment effect helps explain that gap, although it does not always appear and has no single cause.
Fundamentals
Fiscal Dominance: When Public Finances Constrain the Central Bank
Fiscal dominance arises when the government's financing needs end up shaping monetary policy. Understanding it requires looking at institutions, expectations, and decisions—not only the size of public debt.
Fundamentals
Residual Control Rights: Who Decides When the Contract Is Silent
Contracts cannot anticipate every future decision. Residual control rights determine who decides about an asset when the agreement provides no answer.
Fundamentals
Right to Repair: What It Is, What It Covers, and Its Limits
The right to repair seeks to let owners keep a product in use through diagnosis, parts, and information, without treating repair as free or unlimited.
Fundamentals
Path Dependence: How the Past Shapes Present Choices
Early choices, learning, and switching costs can narrow future options. Path dependence explains that process without treating history as destiny.
Fundamentals
Social Cooperation: What It Is and How We Coordinate Different Projects
Social cooperation coordinates different projects through exchange, association, and shared rules. It does not require altruism or eliminate conflict.
Fundamentals
Mental Accounting: Why We Do Not Treat All Money the Same Way
Mental accounting sorts money into categories based on its source, purpose, or expected time of use. It can support self-control, but it can also obscure alternatives and opportunity costs.
Fundamentals
What Is a Credible Commitment and Why Does It Matter?
A commitment is credible when incentives and institutions make it reasonable to expect it will be honored, even when the time comes to act.
Fundamentals
Competition and Consumers: How Choice Disciplines the Market
Competition benefits consumers when real alternatives, adequate information, and the freedom to switch providers are available.
Fundamentals
Loss Aversion: What It Is and How It Shapes Our Decisions
Loss aversion describes why a loss can weigh more heavily than a comparable gain. The key is the reference point from which we judge each change.
Fundamentals
Relational Autonomy: What It Is and Why Relationships Matter
Autonomy is not exercised in a vacuum. The relational approach examines how relationships, norms, and opportunities can widen or narrow a person's capacity to direct their own life.
Fundamentals
Monetary Trilemma: Why Three Goals Cannot Be Achieved at Once
The monetary trilemma explains why an economy cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free capital mobility, and an independent monetary policy.
Fundamentals
National Treatment: What It Is and How It Works in International Trade
National treatment limits internal discrimination against foreign goods, services, or right holders, but it does not mean free entry or absolute equality.
Fundamentals
Moral Hazard: What It Is, How It Arises, and Why Incentives Matter
Moral hazard arises when someone can change their behavior after receiving protection or funding without bearing the full cost of their decisions.
Fundamentals
Diminishing Marginal Returns: What They Are and How They Work
Diminishing marginal returns arise when, with capacity fixed, each additional unit of an input adds less output than the one before it.
Fundamentals
Hold-Up Problem: What It Is and Why It Can Discourage Investment
The hold-up problem arises when an investment that is hard to redeploy leaves one party exposed to later pressure. Understanding its sequence helps explain why valuable investments may never be made.
Fundamentals
Legal Positivism: What It Is and Its Central Theses
A clear introduction to legal positivism, its account of legal sources and validity, its principal variants, and the criticisms it faces.
Fundamentals
Reasonable Time: What It Is and How It Is Assessed
Reasonable time protects people from proceedings that drag on without sufficient justification. It is not assessed by a universal number, but by the circumstances of the case.
Fundamentals
Condorcet Paradox: When Majorities Cycle
A majority can prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A at the same time. This cycle shows why aggregating individual preferences does not always yield a stable collective ranking.
Fundamentals
Resource Misallocation: What It Is and How to Recognize It
A guide to understanding when scarce resources are tied up in uses that create less value than feasible alternatives, and how to assess that problem carefully.
Fundamentals
Formal and Informal Institutions: Differences and Examples
Official rules and social norms coexist in nearly every sphere of life. Understanding their relationship helps us assess their effectiveness, legitimacy, and effects on freedom.
Fundamentals
Financial Inclusion: Access, Use, and Quality
Financial inclusion is not simply about opening accounts: it requires accessible, useful, affordable, and secure services that people can choose and sustain.