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Pareto-Qptimality
Pareto-optimality is a concept of efficiency used in economics and political science named after the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto. A state of affairs is Pareto-optimal (or Pareto-efficient) if and only if there is no alternative state that would make some people better off without making anyone worse off. More precisely, a state of affairs x is said to be Pareto-inefficient (or suboptimal) if and only if there is some state of affairs y such that no one strictly prefers x to y and at least one person strictly prefers y to x.
The two so-called fundamental theorems of welfare economics contain the most famous applications of the concept of Pareto-optimality. The first theorem states conditions under which the allocation associated with any competitive market equilibrium ...
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