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The idea that the choices of individuals are affected by social elements such as considerations of status is present in the economic theory since the very origins of the discipline itself. As a carsic river it reemerges in different forms and in theories which have different structures. Frequently, however, the principles deriving from this idea play a marginal role as modifying factors of the fundamental principles of a theory.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, some American institutionalist (women) economists – H. Kyrk, T. McMahon, J Peixotto and E. Gilboy - developed theoretical, empirical and historical contributions that constituted a theory of consumption. As originally argued by Veblen, consuming certain goods makes it possible to identify with specific social groups and this idea is assumed as the basis of a complete theory of consumption that, in the original formulations, was independent of - and even in opposition to - the principles of marginalist analyses.

The origins, the early phases and the transformations of these theories have been recently analysed. The present paper tries to argue that this approach was widely popular at least till the 50ies. It was a reference point for the economists who first tried to study aggregate consumption function both from theoretical and empirical points of view. An echo of this approach - probably passing through the wide empirical work on consumption made by American economists in the first decades of the century - can in fact be found in the General Theory.

In empirical econometric works of the 40ties, originated by the publication of the General Theory, the main ideas of the approach were assumed as consolidated facts of reality, when some young American economists – F. Modigliani and P. Samuelson between the others - used assumptions based on this approach as the most natural choice for their econometric analyses of aggregate consumption aiming to solve an empirical puzzle. Some of these authors were destined to become very famous, at that stage, however, as the institutionalists of the first phase of the approach they made no reference to marginalist principles.