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While personal consumption accounts for two-thirds of GDP, recent economic events have emphasized our limited ability to translate consumption patterns into policy. This book analyses the network memberships that emerge from the natural settings of our everyday lives, and the pervasive effects that these can have on our preferences and behavior as consumers. Effects of network memberships are nowhere more evident than in our interactions as consumers. Interaction models in consumption that are in pairwise contacts do not represent the complex interactions in networks and effects that are emergent from these interactions. In the proposed model, feedback from consumer activities to preferences is shown to have properties that increase their openness of effects of environments. These dynamics are shown to imply that there is more randomness than popularly recognized in both the daily lives of consumers and the generation of institutions that emerge from these interactions. The network model is then extended to give a form to effects of clustering that is emergent in networks. Effects of clustering on content overlap in the information that consumers exchange in the network are examined in a computational model. Hierarchical allocation heuristics are also implemented to study consumption and savings under differentiated consumer objectives. In applications, transfers that occur between consumption and work and relate to human capital are considered. Finally, the model of information use by networked consumers is used to indicate effects that consumption of information goods can have on economic growth and welfare.

While consumers are recognized as valuing market goods and services for the activities they can construct from them in the frameworks of several disciplines, consequences of the characteristics of goods and services they use in these activities have not been well studied. In this book, knowledge-yielding and conventional goods and services are contrasted as factors in the construction of activities that consumers engage in when they are not in the workplace. Consumers are seen as deciding on non-work activities and the inputs to these activities according to their objectives, and the values and accumulated skills they hold. It is suggested that knowledge content in these activities can be efficient for consumer objectives and also have important externalities through its effect on productivity at work and economic growth. The exposition seeks to elaborate these points and contribute to multi-disciplinary dialogue on consumption. Introduction: Consuming Knowledge Dimensioning Consumption: The Use of Knowledge in Non-Work Activities The Construct of the Valuing of Knowledge and Personal Consumption Expenditure in the U.S. National Accounts 1929-1989 The Interaction of Non-Work and Work Activities: Cross-Domain Transfers of Skill and Affect Integrating Non-Work Activities into Frameworks of Economic Growth Directions for the Study of Knowledge Use in Non-Work Activities