Exogenous Preferences, and Endogenous Tastes / Exogene Präferenzen und endogener Geschmack

Udo Ebert and Hagen Oskar von Dem ()
Additional contact information
Hagen Oskar von Dem: PD, PhD, Fachbereich 4, Universität Oldenburg, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, D-26111 Oldenburg

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), 2002, vol. 222, issue 5, 513-530

Abstract: This paper presents a unifying approach to modelling endogenous tastes. Tastes are defined as orderings of a subspace of a (suitable chosen) commodity space. Using this definition endogenous tastes are analytically similar to externalities. Accordingly, many models in economic theory can be interpreted as dealing with endogenous tastes. It is shown that changes in tastes have a direct and an indirect impact on welfare. The literature on externalities usually focuses on the direct effect while the literature on endogenous tastes mainly deals with the indirect effect. The analysis focuses on two main aspects of variable tastes: the institutional question (who influences tastes) and the technological question (what does it cost). The allocative inefficiency of an economic system with endogenous tastes is demonstrated and Pigouvian-type corrective taxes are discussed.The unifying framework presented in this paper can be used to analyze and discuss a wide variety of variable tastes.

Keywords: Variable or endogenous tastes/preferences; commodity space; externalities; Variable oder endogene Präferenzen; endogener Geschmack; Güterraum; externe Effekte (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2002-0502 (text/html)

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:jns:jbstat:v:222:y:2002:i:5:p:513-530

DOI: 10.1515/jbnst-2002-0502

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik) is currently edited by Peter Winker

More articles in Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik) from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().