Accounting for Tastes

by Gary S. Becker

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 how they are formed and how they affect our behavior. He argues that past experiences and social influences form two basic capital 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.

Genres: Economics

292 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

American economist. He is a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He has important contributions to the family economics branch within the economics. Neoclassical analysis of family within the family economics is also called new home economics . He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.He is currently a Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Reviews

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a sociopath.

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid although the core message is common sense