TITLE:
One Plus One Equals Two: More or Less
AUTHORS:
Tobias F. Rötheli
KEYWORDS:
Vector Addition, Interacting Units, Economic Units with Multiple Dimensions
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.12 No.4,
August
9,
2022
ABSTRACT: Mathematics has many advanced applications in
economics. By contrast, this note applies very simple instruments. We explore a
range of cases where the proposition makes sense that one plus one is more or
less than two. A first case drawn from commerce documents an example where
units have more than one dimension. Examples from production economics (with
reproduction and predator-prey type interactions) further illustrate how adding
units affect the results of summation. The implied logical ambiguities
described here can hamper human communication. Put differently, cognitive
limitations may be the very reason why results of simple scalar additions are
so often presented.