The paper develops a signalling theory of conspicuous consumption where the drive toward spending on an otherwise unuseful good comes from the desire to enter clubs and benefit from the provision of club good financed by members of a club and from a social status effect. Individual incomes are...

We study the relationship between the distribution of individuals' attributes over the population and the extent of risk sharing in a risky environment. We consider a society where individuals differing with respect to risk or their degree of risk aversion form risk-sharing coalitions in the...

The need to insure against idiosyncratic income risk leads to the formation of risksharing groups in village economies where formal financial markets are absent. We develop a theoretical model to address the impact of limited commitment and social control on the extent of informal risk sharing...