Early contributions to the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon

During the 1920s some American women economists developed theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that constituted a theory of consumption. The original formulations of this approach were based on the view, theorised by T. Veblen, that consuming certain goods makes it possible to identify with specific social groups. These analyses were explicitly alternative to the theories of consumption based on marginal utility. In the 1930s, however, the analyses of a second generation of women economists became exclusively empirical and the theoretical features that made the approach original and an alternative to marginalism were lost.