In this paper we revisit the influential theory of monopolistic competition and optimum product variety as developed by Dixit and Stiglitz (1977) with applications in international trade by Krugman (1979,1980), by modeling fixed and variable costs of production in terms of underlying use of...

This paper is the first attempt towards directly testing the existence of status seeking behavior of the poor for a developing economy, India, with the help of a large dataset. The paper empirically validates status consciousness among the relatively poor for both rural and urban areas across...