ABSTRACT
This chapter compares two economic models of social interaction arising from Gary Becker. One comes from his paper “A Theory of Social Interaction” (Becker 1974); the other comes from his book with Kevin Murphy, Social Economics. The variety of approaches to social interaction in the social sciences is easily seen over the course of intellectual history, and the motivation for social interaction models is clearly an outgrowth of economics as a social science, an attempt to explain social phenomena through the behavior of individuals and groups. Such a motivation can be found in the earliest conceptions of a social science and the construction of economic models of society. Becker cites examples from the writings of nineteenth-century economists, as well as contemporary sociological analysis, to justify the importance of studying the topic. His essay explores this element of social life, highlighting that the decisions made under the influence of one’s relative position in society are in essence interactive decisions.
