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In economics, diminishing returns (also called law of diminishing returns,〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diminishing+returns )〕 law of variable proportions, principle of diminishing marginal productivity,〔 or diminishing marginal returns) is the decrease in the marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, while the amounts of all other factors of production stay constant. The law of diminishing returns states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant ("''ceteris paribus''"), will at some point yield lower incremental per-unit returns. The law of diminishing returns does not imply that adding more of a factor will decrease the ''total'' production, a condition known as negative returns, though in fact this is common. For example, the use of fertilizer improves crop production on farms and in gardens; but at some point, adding increasingly more fertilizer improves the yield by less per unit of fertilizer, and excessive quantities can even reduce the yield. A common sort of example is adding more workers to a job, such as assembling a car on a factory floor. At some point, adding more workers causes problems such as workers getting in each other's way or frequently finding themselves waiting for access to a part. In all of these processes, producing one more unit of output per unit of time will eventually cost increasingly more, due to inputs being used less and less effectively. The law of diminishing returns is a fundamental principle of economics.〔 It plays a central role in production theory. ==History== The concept of diminishing returns can be traced back to the concerns of early economists such as Johann Heinrich von Thünen, Jacques Turgot, Adam Smith, James Steuart, Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo. However, classical economists such as Malthus and Ricardo attributed the successive diminishment of output to the decreasing quality of the inputs. Neoclassical economists assume that each "unit" of labor is identical. Diminishing returns are due to the disruption of the entire productive process as additional units of labor are added to a fixed amount of capital. The law of diminishing returns remains an important consideration in farming. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「diminishing returns」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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