Despite the criticisms of subcultural theory as a framework for the sociological study of the relationship between youth, music, style and identity, the term ‘subculture’ continues to be widely used in such work. It is a central contention of this article that, as with subcultural theory, the concept of ‘subculture’ is unworkable as an objective analytical tool in sociological work on youth, mu...

If one accepts some paternalistic objectives, how should this shape policy? This paper addresses this issue by considering the trade-off that results when agents have superior information regarding their own situation and tastes but a paternalistic principal views agents’ tastes as as being biased. Applications include: savings behavior by hyperbolic discounting consumers, schooling choice by t...

This paper investigates the factors that influence an individual’s decision to make voluntary contributions to a public good, focusing on the role of social influences. Measuring social influences is challenging, due to several factors. Group selection may be based on unobservable tastes, there may be unobservable shocks that affect all group members, and the behavior of all group members is de...

lishers is to cater to the overlapping tastes of two groups of biologists. For those with more eclectic tastes and limited budgets, it is possible to purchase each of the articles separately as an off print at a total cost which is less than that of the book. Therefore at the cost of losing the introductory paragraphs to each section, and the index, one could make one's own selection and take u...

A special "gustometer" has been built, which permits continuous measurement of the threshold of taste sensations. Taste sensations show strong adaptation even at the threshold level. The adaptation was much the same for the four primary tastes, but there were large individual differences. Of theoretical interest is the finding that adaptation to a taste can occur even with subliminal stimuli.

This paper revisits the Atkinson–Stiglitz result on uselessness of commodity taxation in the presence of optimal non-linear income taxation in a more general setup, namely when tastes are heterogeneous. This general analysis displays the key economic assumptions under which the Atkinson–Stiglitz result is robust. A small tax on a given commodity is desirable if high income earners have a relati...

Here we investigate associations between complex auditory and complex taste stimuli. A novel piece of music was composed and recorded in four different styles of musical articulation to reflect the four basic tastes groups (sweet, sour, salty, bitter). In Experiment 1, participants performed above chance at pairing the music clips with corresponding taste words. Experiment 2 uses multidimension...

We present a simple model of competition between firms who face boundedly rational consumers. The consumers cannot compare two consumption bundles; instead, they have some fundamental preferences and a selection procedure. In any Nash equilibrium of the slot allocation game, the firms choose the same allocation. There may be multiple equilibria, one of which is always to allocate according to t...

The cultural diversity of culinary practice, as illustrated by the variety of regional cuisines, raises the question of whether there are any general patterns that determine the ingredient combinations used in food today or principles that transcend individual tastes and recipes. We introduce a flavor network that captures the flavor compounds shared by culinary ingredients. Western cuisines sh...

When two taste stimuli are presented, one to each side of the tongue, with a time delay of up to 1 msec., the taste sensation seems to move across the tongue. This phenomenon which is similar to directional hearing, can be used to show periodic fluctuations in sensation magnitude as well as other aspects of sensation. When the apparatus was refined to present taste stimuli, it was possible to o...