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The Origin of Utility: Sexual Selection and Conspicuous Consumption
[journal article]
Abstract This paper proposes an explanation for the universal human desire for increasing consumption and the associated propensity to trade survival opportunity off conspicuous consumption. I argue that this desire was moulded in evolutionary times by a mechanism known to biologists as sexual selection, whe... view more
This paper proposes an explanation for the universal human desire for increasing consumption and the associated propensity to trade survival opportunity off conspicuous consumption. I argue that this desire was moulded in evolutionary times by a mechanism known to biologists as sexual selection, whereby an observable trait — conspicuous consumption in this case — is used by members of one sex to signal their unobservable characteristics valuable to members of the opposite sex. It then shows that the standard economics problem of utility maximisation is formally equivalent to the standard biology problem of the maximisation of individual fitness, the ability to pass genes to future generations, and thus establishes a rigorous theoretical foundation for including conspicuous consumption in the utility function.... view less
Keywords
evolution
Classification
Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Economics
Free Keywords
Natural selection; Utility; Darwin; Conspicuous Consumption; Veblen; Sexual selection
Document language
English
Publication Year
2009
Page/Pages
p. 51-69
Journal
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 72 (2009) 1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2009.05.019
Status
Postprint; peer reviewed
Licence
PEER Licence Agreement (applicable only to documents from PEER project)