The term "Gossen's laws" does not correspond to a widely recognized or established concept in economics, science, or other academic disciplines based on currently available reliable encyclopedic sources. As such, accurate information about "Gossen's laws" as a formal set of principles or theories is not confirmed.
The phrasing may be a reference to Hermann Heinrich Gossen (1810–1858), a German economist who contributed to the early development of marginal utility theory. Gossen is known for formulating what are sometimes referred to as "Gossen's First Law" and "Gossen's Second Law" in the context of utility theory:
- Gossen's First Law suggests that the utility derived from successive units of a good decreases as consumption increases—essentially an early articulation of the law of diminishing marginal utility.
- Gossen's Second Law states that a rational consumer will allocate expenditures so that the ratio of marginal utility to price is equal across all goods—prefiguring later developments in consumer choice theory.
However, the standardized designation "Gossen's laws" is not commonly used in modern economic literature, and the formal term does not appear in authoritative economics references as a widely adopted label. Therefore, while the name may be invoked in historical discussions of marginalism, it is not an established or consistently recognized term in contemporary academic discourse.
Related Topics: Marginal utility, Law of diminishing marginal utility, Consumer choice theory, Hermann Heinrich Gossen, Marginalism.