We showed 10-second silent video clips of unfamiliar gubernatorial debates to a group of experimental participants and asked them to predict the election outcomes. The participants' predictions explain more than 20% of the variation in the actual two-party vote share across the 58 elections in...

This paper shows that, consistent with a signaling-by-consuming model à la Veblen, income elasticities can be predicted from the visibility of consumer expenditures. We outline a stylized conspicuous consumption model where income elasticity is endogenously predicted to be higher if a good is...