It is unlikely that husbands and wives always agree on exactly what public goods to buy. Nor do they necessarily agree on how many hours to work with obvious consequences for the household budget. We therefore model consumption and labor supply behavior of a couple in a non-cooperative setting...

I develop a model of conspicuous consumption to empirically measure the importance of peer beliefs to Americans and Chinese. In the model, a consumer cares not only about the direct utility she receives from consumption, but also about the way her consumption pattern affects her peer group's...

This paper investigates whether the consumption of rich households provides a reference point in the consumption choices of non-rich households from an intertemporal perspective. Using UK household data on food consumption, we estimate the Euler equation implied by a life-cycle model...

This paper examines the extent to which consumption in Russian households responds to exogenous income shocks. During the time period studied in this paper (1994-1998), Russia experienced two major economic crises. Both featured extreme movements in the real ruble-dollar exchange rate. The price...

The cost-of-living crisis has increased attention on consumption and how it differs for particular societal groups. There is much theoretical evidence that consumption patterns of men and women should differ, but the empirical evidence is scant, due in part to the availability of...

We analyse consumers' search and purchase decisions on an Internet platform. Using a rich dataset on all adverts posted and transactions made on a major French Internet platform (PriceMinister), we show evidence of substantial price dispersion among adverts for the same product. We also show...

The compromise effect refers to individuals' tendency to choose intermediate options. Its existence has been demonstrated in a large number of hypothetical choice experiments. This paper uses field data from a specialties restaurant to investigate the existence and strength of the compromise...

We experimentally test Kőszegi and Rabin's (2006, 2007) theory of reference-dependent preferences in the context of price expectations. In an incentivised valuation task, participants are endowed with a mug and provide their willingness to accept (WTA) to sell it. We manipulate the sale price...

Do people only reject interference and keep control in order to affect the outcome? We find that 20% of subjects reject unrequired help and insist on their solution to a problem - although doing so is costly and does not change the result. We tease out the motives by varying the information...

This study measures the extent to which Seoul's COVID-19 shopping coupon program affects individuals' consumption. Unlike other COVID-19-related transfer programs, the Seoul Metropolitan government provides consumption coupons depending on income. We quantify the causal effect of Seoul's program...