IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000176/022939.html

The behavior of other as a reference point

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Bogliacino
  • Pietro Ortoleva

Abstract

We use prospect theory to model reference dependent consumers, where the reference point is the average behavior of the society in the current period. We show that after a finite number of steps under any equilibrium, the distribution of wealth will become and remain equal, or admit a missing class (a particular form of polarization). Under equilibria that admit the highest growth rates, the initial wealth distribution that maximizes this growth rate is one of perfect equality. Conversely, under equilibria that admit the lowest growth rates, perfect equality minimizes this growth rate and societies with a small level of initial inequality grow the fastest. In addition growth rates in corresponding economics without reference dependent consumers admit lower growth rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Bogliacino & Pietro Ortoleva, 2015. "The behavior of other as a reference point," Econógrafos, Escuela de Economía 022939, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000176:022939
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://fce.unal.edu.co/media/files/CentroEditorial/documentos/documentosEE/documentos-economia-67.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    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:col:000176:022939. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Facultad de Ciencias Económicas Unal (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/funalco.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.