The Evolution Of Western Consumption Theory And Its Enlightenment

Economic theory suggests that consumption is the primary purpose of social economic activities. With the continuous progress of the rapid development of economy and society, the importance of consumption on economic activities have become increasingly prominent. Since 1803 from Zaire in his book "Introduction to political economy" for the first time the consumption concept into the category of political economics, western countries has experienced two revolutions of consumption, in the sixties of the 20 th century and consumption instead of production becomes the center of social economic activities, consumer economics has also become an important part of the economics research.The twelfth five-year plan is put forward in our country, to speed up the transformation of the mode of economic growth and expand the consumption demand of residents, and to establish long-term effective mechanism of expanding domestic demand.In the history of the development of human civilization, consumption as the main economic behavior, since ancient times has a very important position, from the first between people of exchange to now the diversification of consumption patterns, consumption structure, accompanied by is the rise and fall of the social development. In a specific historical stage of western countries, due to the impact of productivity development level and economic policy, some economic phenomena at that time became scholars research, scholars in the long-term observation and research analysis based on a large amount of data on the formation of the unique economic point of view, these views and had a important influence on the economic development and social development at that time. The in the careful review on the basis of a large number of domestic and foreign existing research results, mainly uses the literature analysis method, historical analysis, comparative analysis and inductive and deductive method, carried on the review of western consumption theory development, to compare and analyze the different consumption theory, and further analysis of when China’s economic development and consumption policy and its implications, the hope can for the consumption of our country current situation analysis, establish new ideology of consumer economy help.History of economic thought, this paper mainly analyzes the method of historical analysis, the full text was divided into seven parts. The first part is an introduction to the paper, the paper selected topic background, research methods and thesis framework, the paper expounds the research significance and research status at home and abroad; the second part mainly introduced from BC to sixteenth Century the main western consumption thought, including Xenophon, Jia, Christianity and the mercantilism thought; the third part analysis the 17-19 century western classical economics major consumption theory, this period is the main representative of William petty and Adam Smith, Mongolia, Ricardo, the Sith- Malthus; the fourth part sums up the end of the nineteenth Century to 1930 s the main western consumption theories, including Marshall, Commons, Keynes, Veblen’s consumer economy the fifth part analyzes and summarizes the thought; 1940s- 1990 s western major Consumption theory, including Du Sen Bailey, Modigliani, Samuelson, Friedman’s ideology of consumer economy; the sixth part is summing up the 90 s of the 20 th century has western consumption theory, including the consumptive economy thought of Galbraith, Coase, Phelps, Jorgenson; the last part is the influence of western consumption theory on the development of consumption theory and implications for consumer policy formulation.