IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eujhet/v27y2020i2p248-275.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A reappraisal of Galbraith’s challenge to Consumer Sovereignty: preferences, welfare and the non-neutrality thesis

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandre Chirat

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to provide an exegesis of Galbraith’s theory of consumption and the conception of preferences on which it is grounded, which has often been misunderstood. From the point of view of the history of economic thought, this paper sheds new light on the origins of Galbraith’s analysis of consumption. This reappraisal also leads us to show that the latter is bound to a challenge to the Consumer Sovereignty Principle. Consequently, Galbraith’s theory contradicts the logic underlying Welfare Economics. Thanks to this exegesis, I finally explain the rationale behind Galbraith’s endorsement of the thesis of non-neutrality on the problem of value judgments in economics, which is illustrated by his presidential address to the American Economic Association.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandre Chirat, 2020. "A reappraisal of Galbraith’s challenge to Consumer Sovereignty: preferences, welfare and the non-neutrality thesis," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 248-275, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:248-275
    DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2020.1720763
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2020.1720763
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09672567.2020.1720763?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexandre Chirat, 2021. "The correspondence between Baumol and Galbraith (1957–1958) An unsuspected source of managerial theories of the firm," EconomiX Working Papers 2021-35, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    2. Alexandre Chirat & Basile Clerc, 2023. "Convergence on inflation and divergence on price-control among Post-Keynesian pioneers: insights from Galbraith and Lerner," EconomiX Working Papers 2023-4, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    3. Guilhem Lecouteux, 2021. "Who's Afraid of Incoherence? Behavioural Welfare Economics and the Sovereignty of the Neoclassical Consumer," GREDEG Working Papers 2021-01, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    4. Guilhem Lecouteux, 2021. "Reconciling Normative and Behavioural Economics: The Problem that Cannot be Solved," GREDEG Working Papers 2021-27, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    5. Alexandre Chirat, 2022. "Consumer sovereignty in the digital society," EconomiX Working Papers 2022-25, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    6. Alexandre Chirat, 2021. "When Berle and Galbraith brought political economy back to life : Study of a cross-fertilization (1933-1967)," EconomiX Working Papers 2021-27, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    7. Alexandre Chirat, 2020. "Démocratie de la demande versus démocratie de l’offre : Reconstruction et interprétation des analogies démocratie-marché," Working Papers 2020-10, CRESE.
    8. Yulia Gruzina & Irina Firsova & Wadim Strielkowski, 2021. "Dynamics of Human Capital Development in Economic Development Cycles," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-18, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:248-275. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.