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Unit demand

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Source updated October 24, 2025

In economics, a unit demand agent is an agent who wants to buy a single item, which may be of one of different types. A typical example is a buyer who needs a new car. There are many different types of cars, but usually a buyer will choose only one of them, based on the quality and the price.

If there are m different item-types, then a unit-demand valuation function is typically represented by m values $v_{1},\dots ,v_{m}$ , with $v_{j}$ representing the subjective value that the agent derives from item $j$ . If the agent receives a set $A$ of items, then his total utility is given by:

$u(A)=\max _{j\in A}v_{j}$

since he enjoys the most valuable item from $A$ and ignores the rest.

Therefore, if the price of item $j$ is $p_{j}$ , then a unit-demand buyer will typically want to buy a single item, the item $j$ for which the net utility $v_{j}-p_{j}$ is maximized.

01Ordinal and cardinal definitions

A unit-demand valuation is formally defined by:

For a preference relation: for every set $B$ there is a subset $A\subseteq B$ with cardinality $|A|=1$ , such that $A\succeq B$ .
For a utility function: For every set $A$ :

$u(A)=\max _{x\in A}u(\{x\})$

02Connection to other classes of utility functions

A unit-demand function is an extreme case of a submodular set function.

It is characteristic of items that are pure substitute goods.

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Sources and credits

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Unit demand

01Ordinal and cardinal definitions

02Connection to other classes of utility functions

Sources and credits

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