IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/anderf/qt69h2f7cv.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Interpersonal Effects in Consumption: Evidence from the Automobile Purchases of Neighbors

Author

Listed:
  • Grinblatt, Mark
  • Keloharju, Matti
  • Ikäheimo, Seppo

Abstract

This study analyzes the automobile purchase behavior of all residents of two Finnish provinces over several years. It finds that a consumer's purchases are strongly influenced by the purchases of his neighbors, particularly purchases in the recent past and by neighbors who are geographically most proximate. Most of the evidence points to information sharing rather than envy as a generator of consumer preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Grinblatt, Mark & Keloharju, Matti & Ikäheimo, Seppo, 2003. "Interpersonal Effects in Consumption: Evidence from the Automobile Purchases of Neighbors," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt69h2f7cv, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:anderf:qt69h2f7cv
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/69h2f7cv.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abel, Andrew B, 1990. "Asset Prices under Habit Formation and Catching Up with the Joneses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 38-42, May.
    2. Basmann, Robert L & Molina, David J & Slottje, Daniel J, 1988. "A Note on Measuring Veblen's Theory of Conspicuous Consumption," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(3), pages 531-535, August.
    3. Yeung Lewis Chan & Leonid Kogan, 2002. "Catching Up with the Joneses: Heterogeneous Preferences and the Dynamics of Asset Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1255-1285, December.
    4. George J. Stigler, 1950. "The Development of Utility Theory. II," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(5), pages 373-373.
    5. Milton Friedman, 1957. "Introduction to "A Theory of the Consumption Function"," NBER Chapters, in: A Theory of the Consumption Function, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    7. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1, March.
    8. Robson, Arthur J, 1992. "Status, the Distribution of Wealth, Private and Social Attitudes to Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(4), pages 837-857, July.
    9. Oskar Morgenstern, 1948. "Demand Theory Reconsidered," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 62(2), pages 165-201.
    10. Bearden, William O & Etzel, Michael J, 1982. "Reference Group Influence on Product and Brand Purchase Decisions," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(2), pages 183-194, September.
    11. Bernheim, B Douglas, 1994. "A Theory of Conformity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(5), pages 841-877, October.
    12. Bagwell, Laurie Simon & Bernheim, B Douglas, 1996. "Veblen Effects in a Theory of Conspicuous Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 349-373, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 2005. "Information Cascades and Observational Learning," Working Paper Series 2005-22, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grinblatt, Mark & Keloharju, Matti & Ikäheimo, Seppo, 2003. "Interpersonal Effects in Consumption: Evidence from the Automobile Purchases of Neighbors," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt69h2f7cv, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    2. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju & Seppo Ikaheimo, 2004. "Interpersonal Effects in Consumption: Evidence from the Automobile Purchases of Neighbors," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2474, Yale School of Management, revised 31 Dec 1969.
    3. Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & Aldo Rustichini, 2012. "Social Decision Theory: Choosing within and between Groups," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(4), pages 1591-1636.
    4. Jawadi, Fredj & Soparnot, Richard & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2017. "Assessing financial and housing wealth effects through the lens of a nonlinear framework," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 840-850.
    5. Robin Cowan & William Cowan & G.M. Peter Swann, 2004. "Waves in consumption with interdependence among consumers," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 149-177, February.
    6. Norman Loayza & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Luis Servén, 2001. "Una Revisión del COmportamiento y de los determinantes del ahorro en el mundo," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Felipe Morandé & Rodrigo Vergara & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series Edit (ed.),Análisis Empírico del Ahorro en Chile, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 13-48, Central Bank of Chile.
    7. Friedman, Daniel & Ostrov, Daniel N., 2008. "Conspicuous consumption dynamics," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 121-145, September.
    8. Haagsma, Rein, 2018. "Income inequality and saving in a class society: The role of ordinal status," Economics Discussion Papers 2018-12, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. Rong Hai & Andrew Postlewaite & Dirk Krueger, 2013. "On the Welfare Cost of Consumption Fluctuations in the Presence of Memorable Goods, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 14-012, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 15 Apr 2014.
    10. Rong Hai & Dirk Krueger & Andrew Postlewaite, 2020. "On the welfare cost of consumption fluctuations in the presence of memorable goods," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(4), pages 1177-1214, November.
    11. Haagsma, Rein, 2018. "Income inequality and saving in a class society: The role of ordinal status," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 12, pages 1-31.
    12. Leonardo Bursztyn & Robert Jensen, 2017. "Social Image and Economic Behavior in the Field: Identifying, Understanding, and Shaping Social Pressure," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 131-153, September.
    13. Rossi, Mariacristina, 2005. "Households’ Consumption under the Habit Formation Hypothesis. Evidence from Italian Households using the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW)," Economics Discussion Papers 8886, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    14. Jim Malley & Hassan Molana, 2003. "The Life-Cycle-Permanent- Income Hypothesis: A Reinterpretation and Supporting Evidence," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 138, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    15. Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2006. "Empirics of the Identification of Social Interactions; An Evaluation of the Approaches and Their Results," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 193-228, April.
    16. Irina Khvostova & Alexander Larin & Anna Novak, 2016. "Euler Equation with Habits and Measurement Errors: Estimates on Russian Micro Data," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 63(4), pages 395-409.
    17. Holger Kraft & Claus Munk & Frank Thomas Seifried & Sebastian Wagner, 2017. "Consumption habits and humps," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 64(2), pages 305-330, August.
    18. Daria Pignalosa, 2021. "The Euler Equation Approach: Critical Implications of Recent Developments in the Theory of Intertemporal Choice," Bulletin of Political Economy, Bulletin of Political Economy, vol. 15(1), pages 1-43, June.
    19. Alessandro Balestrino, 2011. "On Economics, Leisure and Much More," Chapters, in: Samuel Cameron (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Leisure, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Stavros Panageas & Nicolae Garleanu, 2008. "Yooung, Old, Conservative and Bold: The implications of finite lives and heterogeneity for asset prices," 2008 Meeting Papers 409, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:anderf:qt69h2f7cv. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aguclus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.