Thorstein Veblen

Also known as Thorstein Bunde Veblen

American economist and sociologist (1857–1929)

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Thorstein Veblen was an American economist and sociologist who lived from 1857 to 1929 and developed influential theories about how people's economic behavior is shaped by social status and consumption patterns. His work matters because he challenged the traditional view that people act purely out of rational self-interest, instead showing how social customs and the desire for prestige drive much of our economic activity.

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Person · Open Library

Born: 1857-07-30
Died: 1929-08-03
Works: 63

Top works

Absentee ownership and business enterprise in recent times
Essays in our changing order
The engineers and the price system
An inquiry into the nature of peace and the terms of its perpetuation
The theory of the leisure class

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Type: Person

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Listeners: 19
Total plays: 335

Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement. Besides his technical work he was a popular and witty critic of capitalism, as shown by his best known book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Veblen is famous in the history of economic thought for combining a Darwinian evolutionary perspective with his new institutionalist approach to economic analysis

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Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States
· 2009 · cited 1,448x
Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?
· 1898 · cited 986x
Evidence for declining forest resilience to wildfires under climate change
· 2017 · cited 609x
Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers
· 2020 · cited 595x
The Interaction of Fire, Fuels, and Climate across Rocky Mountain Forests
· 2004 · cited 576x

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Quotes

“Any evolutionary science... is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence... of cumulative causation. The great deserts of the evolutionist leaders... lie... in their having shown how this colorless impersonal sequence of cause and effect can be made use of for theory proper, by virtue of its cumulative character.”
“The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.”
“In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.”
“In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.”
“From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.”
“The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction.”

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Described at

About: Thorstein Veblen

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Commons category: Thorstein Veblen
date of birth: 1857-07-30
date of death: 1929-08-03
name in native language: Thorstein Bunde Veblen
Commons Creator page: Thorstein Veblen
described at URL: fr.dbpedia.org/resource/Thorstein_Veblen

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Article

Thorstein Bunde Veblen (/ˈθɔːrstaɪn ˈvɛblən/ THOR-styn VEH-blən; July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.

In his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen coined the concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. Veblen laid the foundation for the perspective of institutional economics. Contemporary economists still theorize Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology", known as the Veblenian dichotomy.