The paper develops a theoretical framework for studying conspicuous consumption. This is modeled as a device that signals the consumer's social status. Status is some function of the individual's rank in the wealth hierarchy. This approach makes it possible to distinguish between snob and...

Quasimonotone individual demand correspondences are characterized as those which can be rationalized (in a weak sense) by a complete, upper continuous, monotone, and convex preference relation. Moreover, it is shown that an arbitrary set of demand observations can be rationalized by a reflexive,...

Fashion is a popular style of behavior at a given time or place. In this paper we model fashion as a dynamic phenomenon, characterized by fragility of mass behvior and life cycles. Conformity of behavior is generated by a consumption externality, while the typical intertemporal aspects of...

A notion of ''behavioral heterogeneity'' of a finite population of households is modelled. It is shown that the higher the degree of behavioral heterogeneity the less sensitive depends the aggregate consumption expenditure ratio upon prices.As a consequence, behavioral heterogeneity implies a...

Structural Properties of the demand of a large population introduced by the aggregation process are studied. The idea is to consider assumptions on the distribution of household characteristics rather than focusing on the modelling of individual behavior. By opposite to the existing literature...

Earlier work has shown that procrastination can be explained by quasi-hyperbolic discounting. We present a model of effort choice over time that shifts the focus away from completion to performance on a single task. We show that quasi-hyperbolic discounting is detrimental for performance. More...

This paper deals with different concepts of income elasticities of demand for a heterogenous population and the relationship between individual and aggregate elasticities is analyzed. In general, the aggregate elasticity is  not equal to the mean of individual elasticities. The difference...

The so called flat-rate bias is a well documented phenomenon caused by consumers' desire to be insured against fluctuations in their billing amounts. This paper shows that expectation-based loss aversion provides a formal explanation for this bias. We solve for the optimal two-part tariff when...