Ceremonies are central to social life, yet the pressure to conform to community spending norms traps households in a collectively suboptimal equilibrium, imposing severe financial burdens. Using nationally and regionally representative longitudinal data from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, we...

This paper explores whether tax compliance would be affected if the tax payers are "status" seekers. If relative income is a symbol of relative status in a society, status concerned individuals would evade paying taxes more relative to the case where status is not a concern. However, such an...

When wealth or income rises suddenly, the propensity for that "easy money" to be directed towards unproductive use, "easy spending", may rise. The cross-country relationship between conspicuous consumption and revenue windfalls is explored by estimating the response of demand for imports of...

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...