Taste formation in Classical Political Economy

Alex Thomas

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2025, vol. 32, issue 2, 171-189

Abstract: Owing to the mainstream interpretation of classical economics as being supply-side, studies examining the analytical role of demand and consumption have been scarce. In this paper, I bring together such passages in Cantillon, Steuart, Smith and Ricardo and forge an analytical link between social tastes and consumption—an attempt at reconstructing a classical theory of taste formation. A classical theory of taste formation has as its foundation methodological holism—viewing social classes as the fundamental unit of analysis. Through a discussion of necessaries and luxuries in the above classical economists, the social division of commodities is highlighted. By drawing on social classes and the social division of commodities, it is seen that taste plays a critical role in the determination of economic growth by influencing consumption expenditure. Finally, it is demonstrated that taste is both a cause and consequence of foreign trade.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2024.2396856 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:eujhet:v:32:y:2025:i:2:p:171-189

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2024.2396856

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().