Tastes, Castes, and Culture: The Influence of Society on Preferences
Ernst Fehr and
Karla Hoff ()
Additional contact information
Karla Hoff: World Bank
No 5919, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Abstract:
Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here we argue that the opposition to explaining behavioural changes in terms of preference changes is ill-founded, that the psychological properties of preferences render them susceptible to direct social influences, and that the impact of "society" on preferences is likely to have important economic and social consequences.
Keywords: endogenous preferences; culture; caste; frames; anchors; elicitation devices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A13 D01 K0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-hpe, nep-mic, nep-neu and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (84)
Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2011, 121 (556), 396-412
Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5919.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Tastes, castes, and culture: the influence of society on preferences (2011) 
Working Paper: Tastes, castes, and culture: The influence of society on preferences (2011) 
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:iza:izadps:dp5919
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().