Book chapter
Comments on “Information and Product Differentiation”
Economics of Information, pp 37-41
1981
Abstract
Kelvin Lancaster’s revolution has been underway for ten years; I can boast of having been a private in his army from the first (but brevetted to corporal by the Quarterly Review of Economics and Business) Looking back, then, I find myself a little puzzled that the revolution has made as little progress as it has. In part, this may be a matter of no more than the passage of time. Kuhn has taught us that scientific revolutions are won only over the dead bodies and vacant chairs of the old guard, and many of the old guard are not so very old. I suspect, however, that there is more to it than that. Lancaster’s new consumer theory is indeed a superior kit of tools if we want to understand consumer decisions in a good deal of detail. But why should we want to do that? The difficulty may be this. However fine a kit of tools, the new demand theory contains no one grand hypothesis that can concentrate the forces of rebellion against a single point in the lines of reaction. Such a hypothesis is necessary to a scientific revolution. It is less important that the hypothesis be proved. Hypotheses are like areal bombs; an explosion is as effective in scattering the enemy as a solid impact, if not more so.
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Details
- Title
- Comments on “Information and Product Differentiation”
- Creators
- Roger A. McCain - Drexel University, Economics (School of Economics)
- Publication Details
- Economics of Information, pp 37-41
- Series
- Social Dimensions of Economics; 3
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands; Dordrecht
- Number of pages
- 5
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Economics (School of Economics)
- Other Identifier
- 991021807104604721