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The Institutionalist School

New School: HET

Thorstein 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: HET
A 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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