Advertising conveys information not only about product characteristics but also about the number of consumers who know about the product. More advertising may shift expectations towards a larger consumer base, increasing buyers' valuation when there are consumption externalities.

This paper analyzes persuasive advertising and pricing in oligopoly if firms sell differentiated products and consumers have heterogenous social attitudes towards the consumption by others. Deriving product demand from primitives, we show that the demand-enhancing effect of persuasive...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of jealousy for the welfare effects of monetary policy. Jealousy implies that consumption is like pollution: overconsumption may occur because households do not internalize the costs of their consumption to others. This externality opens...

In considering a country that imposes a minimum standard on an imported polluting good, which generates negative consumption externalities, we construct a common-agency model, in which a domestic environmental group and a foreign industrial lobby can influence the formation of the minimum...

A dynamic general equilibrium two-country optimizing model is used to analyze the welfare effects of monetary policy in open economies. The distinguishing feature of the model is that householdsÂ’ preferences feature a "keeping up with the Joneses" effect. This effect implies that...