Whereas the environmental impact of buying luxury goods is debated, there is evidence that purchasing such products-often referred to as conspicuous consumption-can be more sustainable than hoarding cheaper alternatives because luxury goods are more durable and are often passed down through...

This paper studies whether the interplay of social comparisons in housing and rising income inequality contributed to the household debt boom in the US between 1980 and 2007. We develop a tractable macroeconomic model with general social comparisons in housing to show that changes in the...

We document a significant effect of visible inequality on household spending in the United States from 2010 to 2018, but we do not find a comparable effect before the Great Recession. Our proposed definition of visible inequality refers to differences across households in their expenditures on...