The Adbusters website may have some good links relevant to your question.

Prashanth Mundkur wrote:

> On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Ed Burns wrote:
>
> > Continuing corporate growth staves off economic collapse, in our
> > current, misguided, system.  Advertising is intended to continue
> > corporate growth.  Never mind if continuing corporate growth is killing
>
> It seems to me that curtailing *growth* does not
> neccessitate *collapse*. Do you buy the argument
> that, say, a steady-state economy is a "collapse"?
>
> Actually, what I was looking for was some sources
> on the influence of advertising on the economy.
> I'm too lazy to hunt this stuff down, I was hoping
> Tresy or someone else would have some interesting
> info.
>
> Clearly, it seems to play a large part. What
> I wanted to know of were any "studies" on the
> effects of reducing frivolous overadvertising.
> There definitely should be a major effect, but I
> doubt the economy would "collapse". But then I'm
> no economist.
>
> --prashanth