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The Institutionalist SchoolNew School: HETThorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929)Akama's database, [??]Hay's database, [??] New School: HET Who was Thorstein Veblen? and why should anyone care? By Jonathan Larson Thorstein Veblen on Conspicuous and Vicarious Consumption in Dress |
Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874-1948)New School: HET |
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)New School: HETA Biography Interview Obituary: The New York Times Obituary: The Washington Post |
In the tradition of Veblen and Galbraith, Prof. Juliet Schor of Harvard has argued in her recent book, The Overspent American, that our spending patterns are often based not on an objective assessment of our own needs but on social pressures to keep up not with the Joneses but with the Gateses! See Keeping up with the Gateses? by Louis Uchitelle, from The New York Times on the web, May 3, 1998, for a discussion. See also Self-Help for Spenders by N. Gregory Mankiw, from Fortune, May 11, 1998, for a review of The Overspent American by a Harvard colleague of Prof. Schor.
Paul Krugman argues, only half jokingly, in The Ice Age Cometh, in the May 25, 1998 issue of Fortune, that Wall Street investors may be basing their decisions not on rational calculation but on obsolete instincts that human beings had evolved to survive in times long past.
See also this list of news articles on behavioral economics.
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