Accounting for Tastes

This lively new collection of essays by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker confronts the problem of preferences and values. He argues that past experiences and social influences form two basic capital stocks: personal and social. He then applies these concepts to assessing the effects of advertising, the power of peer pressure, the nature of addiction, and the function of habits. This framework promises to illuminate many other realms of social life previously considered off-limits by economists.