Institutions Hold Consumption on a Leash: An Evolutionary Economic Approach to the Future of Consumption

Abstract

As first suggested by Keynes (1930), much thinking about the future of consumption starts with claims about future income, technology or demographics, perhaps concocted in a growth model, and then considers what consumption will look like, as a separate question, given those priors. A different approach starts one step further back with inquiry into the type of institutions that would produce such evolutionary growth. You then ask how those same institutions would shape consumption. I argue that the future of consumption depends on income and innovation, which themselves depend on the evolution of institutions. I suggest that this is an evolutionary economic approach to the future of consumption.