Attitudes, Rationality and Consumer Demand

Ever since the marginalist revolution, the analysis of consumer behaviour has occupied a central place in economic thought. Indeed, its development has moulded much of the apparatus and technique that forms today’s economic tool kit. In the heyday of nineteenth century neo-classicism, preoccupation with this subject substantially absorbed the economic landscape. The notion of maximisation and its counterpart of equality at the margin carried thinking about the consumer, along with the science of economics itself, to new intellectual heights.