This paper provides an analysis of the social consequences of people seeking to keep up with the Joneses. All individuals attempt to reach a higher rank than the Joneses, including the Joneses themselves. This attitude gives rise to an equilibrium in which all individuals have equal utilities...

Using a circular matching model (Marimon R, Zilibotti F. Unemployment vs. mismatch of talents: Reconsidering unemployment benefits. Economic Journal 1999;109; 266-291), where the wage setting is similar to Weiss (Weiss A. Job queues and layoffs in labor markets with flexible wages. Journal of Political...

We study the impact of a minimum wage in a segmented labor market in which workers are at different stages of their careers. At the end of a learning-by-doing period, workers paid the minimum wage quit “bad jobs” for better-paying “good jobs”, following an on-the-job search process with...