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Status, Growth and the Environment. Goods as Symbols in Applied Welfare Economics; Kjell Arne Brekke and Richard B. Howarth; Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2002, 208 pages, £49.95, ISBN 1 84064 433 8 by Ross Cullen is a Social Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Status, Growth and the Environment. Goods as Symbols in Applied Welfare Economics; Kjell Arne Brekke and Richard B. Howarth; Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2002, 208 pages, £49.95, ISBN 1 84064 433 8 about?

Economics does not have a cardinal utility function it can deploy to measure gains or losses from projects, programmes or policies, but it uses a proxy -the value of private consumption. Applied welfare economics is built on a foundation of individual preferences that are fixed, and independent of social context. That foundation allows economists to appraise projects, programmes or policies through their impacts on individualÕs consumption. Changes in the value of consumption are our measuring rod. Our confidence in the reliability of the consumption measure is challenged by Brekke and Howarth, who argue the independent preferences assumption is in conflict with empirical data on human psychology. Brekke and Howarth argue that economists have long recognised that consumption is driven in part by status needs, citing Smith (1776, Book V, Chapter II), that the English of the day would be Ôashamed to appear in publicÕ without wearing items such as leather shoes and linen shirts. The absence of these goods, Smith alleged, Ôwould be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which it is presumed, no body can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.Õ Individuals strive to

Who reads Status, Growth and the Environment. Goods as Symbols in Applied Welfare Economics; Kjell Arne Brekke and Richard B. Howarth; Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2002, 208 pages, £49.95, ISBN 1 84064 433 8?

Author

Ross Cullen

Publisher

Elsevier Science; Elsevier ; North-Holland Publ Co; Elsevier BV (ISSN 0167-4870)

Published

2004

Language

EN

Field

Social Sciences