Hotelling's lemma is a result in microeconomics that relates the supply of a good to the maximum profit of the producer. It was first shown by Harold Hotelling, and is widely used in the theory of the firm.
Overview
Hotelling's lemma is a result in microeconomics that relates the supply of a good to the maximum profit of the producer. It was first shown by Harold Hotelling, and is widely used in the theory of the firm.
Specifically, it states: The rate of an increase in maximized profits with respect to a price increase is equal to the net supply of the good. In other words, if the firm makes its choices to maximize profits, then the choices can be recovered from the knowledge of the maximum profit function.
Formal Statement
Let denote a variable price, and be a constant cost of each input. Let be a mapping from the price to a set of feasible input choices . Let be the production function, and be the net supply.
The maximum profit can be written by
