Cover: Accounting for Tastes, from Harvard University PressCover: Accounting for Tastes in PAPERBACK

Accounting for Tastes

Product Details

PAPERBACK

Print on Demand

$37.00 • £32.95 • €33.95

ISBN 9780674543577

Publication Date: 03/30/1998

Short

292 pages

14 line illustrations

World

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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.

Awards & Accolades

  • Gary S. Becker Is Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics

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