What do Economists Know?: New Economics of Knowledge
2. Fukuyama even acknowledges the existence of conspicuous consumption in the following passage: "Much of what passes for economic motivation-the satisfaction of preferences through the acquisition of material goods-is motivated not so much by the desire for consumption, but by the desire for what economist Robert Frank calls "positional goods"-one's standing relative to other people in a social hierarchy" (p. 229). 3. Technically, to use the taxonomy developed by Geoffrey Hodgson (1993), Fnkuyama's work is phylogenetic (it does allow for evolution) with an ontogenetic asymptote-society approaches a particular state based on the biological nature of human beings. A true institutionalist approach is phylogenetic in that "there is not necessarily a final outcome, a state of equilibrium or rest" (Hodgson 1993, 44). 4. See World Bank 1998. 5. See Chandler 1977.