In a polarised and highly unequal country such as South Africa, it is unlikely that a definition of the middle class that is based on an income threshold will adequately capture the political and social meanings of being middle class. We therefore propose a multi-dimensional definition, rooted...

With Saudi Arabia's tendency to implement a policy of economic openness to the world from the early 1980s, the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption (society of consumption and imitation) has increased. Due to the adoption of the concepts of economic globalization, changing consumption patterns,...

In this article the author considers an economy in which individuals are matched into pairs and the desirability of an individual depends on her position on the distribution of wealth. He assumes that individuals show their relative standing by consuming a conspicuous good and he shows that...

In this article the author considers an economy in which individuals are matched into pairs and the desirability of an individual depends on her position on the distribution of wealth. The author assumes that individuals show their relative standing by consuming a conspicuous good and he shows...

This paper develops an incomplete information model wherein individuals face a trade-off between status and security when deciding the optimal amount of conspicuous consumption. On the one hand, we assume that individuals derive utility from status,which is obtained by signaling wealth through...

We demonstrate that interpersonal comparisons lead to "keeping up with the Joneses"-behavior. Using annual household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the causal effect of changes in reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived...

This paper develops an incomplete information model wherein individuals face a trade-off between status and security when deciding the optimal amount of conspicuous consumption. On the one hand, we assume that individuals derive utility from status, which is obtained by signaling wealth through...

Although non-market goods are not directly allocated through markets, some of these goods are allocated through markets in an indirect fashion. Such is the case with conspicuous consumption: people buy market goods (e.g., clothing) to signal their wealth and then increase the probability of...

We propose a method to quantify other-regarding preferences in group decisions. Our method is based on revealed preference theory. It measures willingness-to- pay for others’ consumption and willingness-to-pay for equality in consumption by evaluating consumption externalities in monetary...

A century ago, Thorstein Veblen introduced socially contingent consumption into the economic literature. This paper complements the scarce empirical literature by testing his conjecture on South African household data and finds that Black and Coloured households spend relatively more on visible...