ABSTRACT
Questions of “tastes” have long been perplexing in economics. Neoclassical perspectives commonly take tastes as given, as either a matter of fact or of convenience. In this view, changes in consumption that might seem to reflect changing tastes should instead be traced to changes in wages, prices, and technologies of household production (Stigler and Becker 1977). In contrast, social and institutional views generally portray individuals' tastes as shaped crucially by sociocultural and institutional considerations. Yet transmission mechanisms for preferences are not well-understood (Bowles 1998, Hodgson 2003). The perspective of social economics is particularly valuable in this regard, given its concern with connections between socioeconomic context and individual outlook and behavior (Etzioni 2003, Dolfsma 1999).
