Essays in Economic Theory

Abstract

This thesis is composed of 3 independent essays on economic theory. Each essay is meant to be read separately, including footnotes and appendices. In particular, essays 2 and 3 include specific bibliography. The general bibliography is included at the end of the thesis. The first essay reviews some well known conceptual and empirical problems that appear when economic theorists deal with preferences and choice theory, in general. While assessing those problems, the essay lays the ground for a detailed discussion of the possibility of preference learning, formation and change. The essay concludes proposing a theoretical framework to study these phenomena. The second essay, although independent from the first, is also devoted to the issue of preference change. In particular, it studies the possibility that cultural preferences evolve as a result of the combination of technological innovation and cultural transmission mechanisms. At the same time, it allows for the possibility that those cultural preferences determine the short term outcome of economic variables. In addition, it builds a framework where the combination of technological innovation, cultural transmission and economic structure lead to a process of endogenous preference heterogeneity and clustering. Hence it provides a model to understand how culture and the economic structure interact and coevolve. The third essay presents some theoretical problems that arise when using the concept of a matching function as a modelling device for the labor market. In particular, necessary conditions for the ratio of the number of matches per job searcher to be interpreted as the average job finding probability are established.

References

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