Consumer economics

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Consumer economics is a branch of economics. It is a broad field, principally concerned with microeconomic analysis behavior in units of consumers, families, or individuals (in contrast to traditional economics, which primarily government or business units). It sometimes also encompasses family financial planning and policy analysis. The term largely describes what was more commonly called "home economics" in the past.

[edit] History

Consumer economics has its roots in pre-World War academia. The traditional economists had little interest in analyzing family units. When economic theory was insufficient to explain the phemonemon of women starting to enter the labor for en masse, consumer economics both gained attention and received important contributions from economic theorists. Major theoretical cornerstones include Gary Becker's Household Production Model, time allocation models and Stigler's information search theory.

Consumer economics concludes the family-unit economists were strongly influenced by the most recent "consumer era"; which was the "Modern Consumer Movement" of the 1970s. The connection between Consumer Economics and consumer-related politics has been overt^{[citation needed]}, although the strength of the connection varies between Universities and individuals.