Theories of Consumer's Behaviour

A Cynical View

Bibliographic Data

ID9724320
AuthorsE J Mishan (corresponding author)
Year1961
Volume28
Issue109
Pages1
Publication date1961-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2550449
OpenAlexW2315680901
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Since the popularization in the Eighteen Seventies of the concept of marginal utility, theories of consumer's behaviour have come to occupy one of the central positions in that corpus of economic analysis which, before the war at any rate, was customarily referred to as the theory of value. It is surely a tribute to the influence of a powerful tradition raised on the authority of such names as Jevons, Marshall and Edgeworth, and, more recently, Hicks and Samuelson, to mention only those in the English-speaking assemblage, that although frequently questioned and sometimes challenged, theories of consumer's behaviour continue to form a necessary part of the syllabus of all students specializing in economics. And if with the older techniques, marginal utility and indifference-preference fields, the interest in such theories eventually appeared to languish, the invention of revealed preference has revived our spirits wonderfully by providing us with a rather impressive technique in which to express familiar theorems and in which to carry on the staple controversies of old. I must, therefore, reconcile myself to being regarded as something of a killjoy when I propose that we abandon all this; that we seek to dislodge such theorems from their hold on our imagination and to face the fact that though fascinating in themselves they form an unnecessary adornment on the apparatus of economic analysis. Recognizing the strong intellectual vested interest in the current doctrines I cannot, of course, expect the reader to fall in with these proposals unless cogent reasons are adduced for them. To that extent this paper constitutes an essay in persuasion. My aim is to convince the reader that, after all the display of technical virtuosity associated with such theorems, there is nothing the practising economist can take away with him to help him come to grips with the complexity of the real world. Indeed, he would be no worse off if he remained ignorant of all theories of consumer's behaviour, accepting the obviously indispensable Law of Demand on trust2

Economics · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Marginal utility · Microeconomics · Neoclassical economics · Positive economics · Preference · Social science · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Economic Theory and Institutions · Philosophy