Growth and Keeping up with the Joneses

This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data

Growth and Keeping up with the Joneses

Author Info

Wendner, Ronald

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Ron Wendner

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of the desire to keep up with the Joneses (KUJ) on economic growth and optimal tax policy in a continuous time overlapping generations model with AK technology and gradual retirement. Due to the desire to KUJ, the propensity to consume out of total wealth rises (declines), and the balanced growth rate declines (increases) when the households' individual total (accumulated \emph{and} human) wealths are increasing (decreasing) with age. The rate of retirement determines whether or not a household's total wealth is increasing with age. If total wealth is increasing/decreasing with age, an optimal allocation is decentralized by a lump sum tax system that is progressive/regressive in age. The desire to KUJ strengthens the intergenerational regressivity (progressivity) of the optimal tax system.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 18001.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: 19 Oct 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:18001

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Schackstr. 4, D-80539 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49-(0)89-2180-2219
Fax: +49-(0)89-2180-3900
Web page: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de
More information through EDIRC

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Ekkehart Schlicht).

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D91 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
O40 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-AGE-2009-10-31 (Economics of Ageing)
NEP-ALL-2009-10-31 (All new papers)
NEP-DGE-2009-10-31 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
NEP-FDG-2009-10-31 (Financial Development & Growth)
NEP-HAP-2009-10-31 (Economics of Happiness)

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

Neumark, David & Postlewaite, Andrew, 1998. "Relative income concerns and the rise in married women's employment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 157-183, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
- David Neumark & Andrew Postlewaite, 1995. "Relative Income Concerns and the Rise in Married Women's Employment," NBER Working Papers 5044, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Bill Dupor & Wen-Fang Liu, 2003. "Jealousy and Equilibrium Overconsumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 423-428, March. [Downloadable!]
Christopher D. Carroll & Jody Overland & David N. Weil, 1997. "Comparison Utility in a Growth Model," NBER Working Papers 6138, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
- Christopher D Carroll & Jody Overland & David N Weil, 1997. "Comparison Utility in a Growth Model," Economics Working Paper Archive 387, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
- Carroll, Christopher D & Overland, Jody & Weil, David N, 1997. " Comparison Utility in a Growth Model," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(4), pages 339-67, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Sara J. Solnick & David Hemenway, 2005. "Are Positional Concerns Stronger in Some Domains than in Others?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 147-151, May. [Downloadable!]
Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2005. "How much do we care about absolute versus relative income and consumption?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 405-421, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
- Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2001. "How Much Do We Care About Absolute Versus Relative Income and Consumption?," Working Papers in Economics 63, Göteborg University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
Calvo, Guillermo A & Obstfeld, Maurice, 1988. "Optimal Time-Consistent Fiscal Policy with Finite Lifetimes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 411-32, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 1997. "On relative wealth effects and the optimality of growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 87-92, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Wendner, Ronald, 2009. "Conspicuous Consumption and Overlapping Generations," MPRA Paper 15527, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
Other versions:
- Ronald Wendner, 2009. "Conspicuous Consumption and Overlapping Generations?," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2009_05, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI). [Downloadable!]
McBride, Michael, 2001. "Relative-income effects on subjective well-being in the cross-section," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 251-278, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2005. "Income and well-being: an empirical analysis of the comparison income effect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 997-1019, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Fisher, Walter H. & Heijdra, Ben J., 2009. "Keeping up with the ageing Joneses," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 53-64, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
- Fisher, Walter H. & Heijdra, Ben J., 2007. "Keeping up with the Ageing Joneses," Economics Series 204, Institute for Advanced Studies. [Downloadable!]
Dirk Willenbockel, 2008. "Social time preference revisited," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 609-622, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Olof Johansson-Stenman & Fredrik Carlsson & Dinky Daruvala, 2002. "Measuring Future Grandparents" Preferences for Equality and Relative Standing," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 362-383, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

Full references

Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? IDEAS also computes impact factors for journals and working paper series.

This page was last updated on 2009-12-6.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.