From Carl Menger's Theory of Goods to an Evolutionary Approach to Consumer Behaviour

Wilhelm Ruprecht ()

Papers on Economics and Evolution from Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography

Abstract: A characteristic feature of economic development is the ever changing structure of consumption patterns. Reducing the explanation of this phenomenon to changing prices, finally caused by changes in the availability of goods (or characteristics), would neglect a major force driving this change, i.e. the variation of consumer wants and consumer knowledge. The present paper aims at sketching an evolutionary framework for the analysis of consumer behaviour that takes account of these features. For this purpose, Carl Menger's theory of goods is taken as a starting point. Whereas economists after the 'marginalistic revolution' were almost exclusively concerned with the determinants of exchange value and developing price theory, Menger puts as much emphasis on the user value as on the exchange value. Regarding the way of how user value changes a connection between Menger's 19th century theory of goods and 20th century learning theories is established. The problem of how to get from individual learning processes to aggregate consumption patterns is approached by recollecting the genetic underpinnings of human learning and its contingency on certain physical and social conditions. Taking into account that these conditions are dynamic, the presented approach allows interpreting collective learning processes as historical events and makes them fruitful for the analysis of economic change.

Keywords: Austrian economics; evolutionary economics; consumer theory; learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B25 B52 B53 D11 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2005-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esi:evopap:2005-11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers on Economics and Evolution from Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography Deutschhausstrasse 10, 35032 Marburg. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christoph Mengs ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).