's economic position relative to a reference group. Using merged data on race and state level income, we demonstrate that a key … prediction of our model -- that visible consumption should be declining in mean reference group income -- is strongly borne out … in the data separately for each racial group. Moreover, we show that accounting for differences in reference group income …

traditional market-level data and measures of consumer search intensity. After presenting simulation studies, we consider an …

: consumer surplus from a hospital demand system and the fraction of population hospital admissions that would be covered by the … consumer willingness-to-pay for network breadth, which varies by age. 60-year-olds value the broadest network approximately …

substantial overproduction: auctioned quantities are 82% above the profit-maximizing level. From the consumer perspective however …

Inequality in income or earnings is the most indisputable fact about the distribution of income. Inequality in income … income redistribution, and the efficacy of various policy tools, economists are also concerned with establishing how various …. Economists have constructed various theories that purport to explain income distribution. Some aspects of these theories have …

In this paper we investigate the effect of relative income on marital status. We develop an identity model based on … hypothesize that the "marriage ideal" is determined by the median income in an individual's local reference group. After … controlling flexibly for the absolute level of income and a number of other factors, the ratio between a man's income and the …