num_pages: 292
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 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.
language: English
title: Accounting for Tastes
titlecomplete: Accounting for Tastes
genres: Economics
ratings_count: 16
publisher: Harvard University Press