... from consuming 4 hours of work and 6 hours of leisure, as they would if they consumed 7 hours of work and 3 hours of leisure. The shape of the indifference curve implies that indifference curves are negatively sloped and convex to the origin; thus if you are looking at the curve from the origin it will be bowed in. It is telling us how much hours of leisure we are willing to give up to get more hours of work. It is telling us how much of leisure we are willing to substitute to get more of work in order to maintain the same level of satisfaction. This is called the marginal rate of substitution (MRS). The marginal rate of substitution is the amount of one good (i.e. work) that has to be given up if the consumer is to obtain one extra unit of the other good (leisure). ...

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