Question

Explain Veblen’s ideas within Radical perspective.

Please clearly and with the max 10-15 sentence

Answer 1

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

Thorstein Veblen was an American economist who lived in between the 1857 and 1929. The ideas of Veblen has a unique identity and unite features from the ideas of other economists who lived as his contemporary. The Veblen is most discussed and he is well known for his idea "conspicuous consumption", and he developed this idea through his analysis performed in the society. In this process of analysis he mainly try to identify the inter connections existing in between the society, culture and economics.

He examines the society in a very efficient manner and he finalized the fact that people perform their purchases in accordance with their social order and by this purchase they also want to mark their economic status to others. And he is one among the person who strongly criticized the wealthy people  and their consumption habits. As a part of this strong criticism he coined the term "conspicuous waste".

When we clearly examines his ideas we are clear with the idea, that is what does "Veblen's good" means. Veblen's good means that the demand for a particular good increases when the price of that particular good increases. Which denotes the idea that these kind of goods are not available in the local markets and the goods holds a strong identity of brands and available to only certain sections of the community. And the most noted point is that when the price of these goods increases the demand decreases as the impact of the social standards assigned to that product.

He rejected the Laissez-faire theory and economics, Marxian economics ideas and also the neo classical economists. And he try to incorporate the economics with sociology and try to improve how this effect the economics. And also he try to explain the economic ideas on the light of Darwinian principles and to show how human biology and human psychology has it's roots on the economics.

Veblen is the founder of one of the Schools in economics, that is Institutional economics. The Institutional economics try to find out how the institutions and evolutionary process has their own role in this principle. The Veblenian dichotomy is also his contribution. For him institution determines how technologies are used.

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