Two excerpts on dollar votes

자료 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_voting (as of Oct. 01, 2011)

In economics, dollar voting is an analogy used to explain how the purchasing choices of consumers affect which products will continue to be produced and supplied to the market. Every dollar paid for a particular product may be considered a "dollar vote" for that product, such that the products with the largest number of dollar votes generate the most profit and will therefore continue to be produced. A boycott would be a vote against a product.

The reference to "dollar" is just an example; the principle holds for any currency. The expressions "vote with your wallet" and "vote with your dollar" refer to dollar voting.

Dollar voting is similar in theory to Foot voting.

Criticism

Some economists, like Amartya Sen, have argued that dollar voting requires near perfect knowledge about any product that one wishes to buy. It is sometimes impossible to know whether a product was made by child labour, for example.


자료 2: CyberEconomics: Rationing and Allocating

(...) Economists sometimes make an analogy to politics to explain how a price system decides what should be produced.

• 1. A political election offers citizens a variety of candidates, 
• 2. each of whom tries to convince the citizens that his policies are best. 
• 3. In the process of voting, the electorate keeps some candidates and retires others to private life. Because political leaders must keep coming before the citizens for election, the actions they can take are limited. 
• 4. The electorate has ultimate control over the policies that a democracy adopts.

Citizens, as consumers, also vote in the marketplace.

• 1. The marketplace offers consumers a variety of products, 
• 2. and each producer tries to convince consumers that his product is best. 
• 3. Consumers vote for products by spending their dollars. Products receiving a lot of dollar votes will be profitable and will continue being produced. Products that do not receive enough dollar votes will die. Dollar voting provides feedback to producers. It tells them whether their performance is acceptable or not. 
• 4. Dollar voting implies that consumers, not producers, ultimately decide what will be produced in a market economy. This power of consumers is often called "consumer sovereignty." (...)