ENGLISH

Accounting for Tastes

By Gary S. Becker

Book information

Publisher
Harvard University Press
Year
1996
ISBN
0674543564, 9780674543560
LCC
HF5415.32 .B43 1996
Open Library ID
OL813547M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
13 MB (13625206 bytes)
Pages
279\279
Orientation
yes
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-08-31 04:54:40

Description

Economists generally accept as a given the old adage that there's no accounting for tastes. Nobel Laureate Gary Becker disagrees, and in this lively new collection he confronts the problem of preferences and values: how they are formed and how they affect our behavior. He argues that past experiences and social influences form two basic capital stocks: personal and social. He then applies these concepts to assessing the effects of advertising, the power of peer pressure, the nature of addiction, and the function of habits. This framework promises to illuminate many other realms of social life previously considered off-limits by economists.

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