The theory of consumer choice fills the opening chapters of any micro-economic textbook. Yet, surprisingly, this position of privilege has not translated into a flourishing of economic research that is comparable to what has happened in other branches of economic reasoning.
Starting with Menger, the Austrian economic tradition has always shifted the focus of attention from the problem of equilibrium to that of social order, to the evolution of norms, institutions and practices that favor social cooperation and coordination. Within this tradition competition and markets are not viewed as states, but as processes in which change and errors occur and efficiency is reached but also easily lost. The real economic problem becomes a problem of knowledge ??? how it is discovered, how it is transmitted. Consumers??? interactions and choices and actual consumption practices play an important role in these evolving forms of sociality. And it is within this framework, that allows for experimentation and learning, that they should be studied.
Advances in Austrian Economics is now available online at ScienceDirect ??? full-text online of volumes 2 onwards.
*Part of the Advances in Austrian Economics series
*A collection of high-level papers on the evolution of consumption
*International in scope

The Active Consumer discusses how consumers seem to delight in trying new solutions and exploring new combinatory possibilities. This book provides an economic-theoretical understanding of this phenomenon and the many ways in which innovation can structure consumer choice. The authors show from different points of view how central novelty can be in consumer behaviour, how it relates to technical change and how new consumer capabilities are developed and organized.

The Active Consumer discusses how consumers seem to delight in trying new solutions and exploring new combinatory possibilities. This book provides an economic-theoretical understanding of this phenomenon and the many ways in which innovation can structure consumer choice. The authors show from different points of view how central novelty can be in consumer behaviour, how it relates to technical change and how new consumer capabilities are developed and organized.

The Research in the History of Economic Methodology (RHETM) 34B, includes original research from preeminent scholars in the field. RHETM is one of the oldest and most respected publications in the field, and the Vol 34B is crucial for economists, methodologists, and historians of the social sciences.

A supplement to History of Political Economy Economists and psychologists share an interest in explaining how people make the choices that they do. However, economists have tended to stress individual rationality, shaped by economic motives and expressed in formal logical or mathematical models, while psychologists have preferred to identify influences through experimentation. In recent decades, behavioral economics has bridged the two fields and challenged the traditional economic assumption that individuals choose rationally. The essays collected here provide a longer view and reflect on episodic contact between psychology and economics beginning in the late nineteenth century. They help explain why meaningful, sustained joint inquiry eluded both disciplines for so long and usefully complement the recent inclination of researchers in each field to find inadequacy in the other. Contributors: Marina Bianchi, Simon J. Cook, Neil De Marchi, Jose Edwards, Tiziana Foresti, Craufurd D. Goodwin, Judy L. Klein, Harro Maas, Ivan Moscati, John Staddon, Andrej Svorencik