The market for preferences

New market creation through transformation

“…Each stakeholder comes on board the network by actually committing to and investing in particular local shapes and features of the emerging new market, subject to the constraints of everyone else already on board. In other words, every new member who actually comes on board either re-shapes the market to the extent they can persuade others to change their views or re-shapes their own preferences to the extent they are docile toward the views of the others (Akerlof and Kranton, 2005;Earl and Potts, 2004). Notice that we are not suggesting a new "charisma" theory of entrepreneurship, although some members of the network may indeed be more charismatic than others.…”

Anchoring in Economics: On Frey and Gallus on the Aggregation of Behavioural Anomalies

“…Such outcomes also depend on: a) the extent to which people employ inputs from the 'market for preferences' (Earl and Potts, 2004) -such as social rules and expertise from the wider community, and market institutions such as social media, online reviews, discussion boards and product comparison websites -as means of taking better decisions; b) the extent to which suppliers set out skilfully to exploit their customers' decision-making limitations (for example, in ways considered by Kysar, 1999a, 1999b); and c) the extent to which suppliers and those who design, approve and implement regulations are themselves operating subject to behavioural biases.…”

“…With no a priori basis for assuming that humans' inherited shortcomings would be eliminated in everyday choice settings, it is surely wiser to begin by acknowledge these limitations, for this is more conducive to considering processes that might offset them, and hence for deriving policy implications. For example, the Earl and Potts (2004) analysis of the market for preferences took its authors from a behavioural starting point to a more institutional analysis: it began with the problem of bounded rationality, combined with the infrequent use that consumers make of many markets, which results in differences in what people know about good ways of choosing a particular product at a particular point in time. The consumer's problem is to find a route from problem-recognition to an effective solution, for it is not possible just to go straight there in the manner of a rational choice model.…”

Economic evolution, identity dynamics and cultural science

“…Davis also points to Sen's (2004Sen's ( , 2007 analysis of multiple identities in the constituency of each individual agent, a point already recognised by behavioural economists (e.g. Earl 1986, Earl andPotts 2004).…”