I develop a dynamic theory of luxury consumption, particularly emphasizing the causal effect that pursuit of luxury goods has on wealth accumulation. A quasi-luxury is defined as a good whose marginal rate of substitution is increasing in a utility index. Under certain conditions, it is indeed a...

ABSTRACT By using a panel survey of Japanese adults, we show that smoking behavior is associated with personal time discounting and its biases, such as hyperbolic discounting and the sign effect, in the way that theory predicts: smoking depends positively on the discount rate and the degree of...

We examine stability of competitive equilibrium in an N-country world economy with capital accumulation, where each country can have either increasing marginal impatience (IMI) or decreasing marginal impatience (DMI). The necessary and sufficient condition for stability is shown as positive...