The Visual Decoding of the “Wheel of Duality” in Consumer Theory in Modern Microeconomics: An Instructional Tool Usable in Advanced Microeconomics to Turn “Pain” into “Joy”

Abstract

Duality is the heart of advanced microeconomics. It exists everywhere throughout advanced microeconomics, from the beginning of consumer theory to the end of production theory. The complex, circular relationships among various theoretical microeconomic concepts involved in the setting of duality theory have led it to be called the “wheel of pain” by many graduate economics students. Put simply, the main aim of this paper is to turn this “wheel of pain” into a “wheel of joy”. To be more specific, the primary purpose of this paper is to graphically decode the logical, complex relationships among a quartet of dual functions which present preferences as well as a quartet of demand-related functions in a visual manner.