Fashion, Growth and Welfare: An Evolutionary Approach

The task of this paper is to explore the interplay between fashion, consumer lifestyles and economic growth in the context of a world of technological change in which the menu of possibilities that consumers face is constantly changing and tending to increase in length. Our working definition of ‘fashion’ is simple, namely the tendency or behavioral norm of actors to adopt certain types or styles of customs or commodities nearly simultaneously, only to adopt a different type or style of custom or commodity in future periods. The demand spikes associated with fashion may pertain to newly introduced products or to products that have been around for some time; they may also occur in hybrid cases where a seemingly defunct product or genre is given a brief rebirth by being reincarnated in terms of a new technology. Clearly, this is not a place for equilibrium analysis of the orthodox kind in which all that consumers are adjusting to are relative price changes and changes in their life-cycle stage that affect what they wish to consume. We need to understand how consumers cope with the problem of choice in the face of such changes, and how their preferences change endogenously. A better understanding