Comparisons in Economic Thought: Economic interdependency reconsidered

The idea of comparing rewards with others has a long and persistent presence in the social sciences, and can be found in many psychological, social and managerial theories. In economics, this idea can be traced back through the works of a substantial number of eminent thinkers, from Genovesi and Hume, to Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and Mill, through to Veblen, Pigou, and Keynes.

In the last two decades the notion of social comparisons has started to appear more frequently in economic literature, ...