Abstract: We offer a new explanation of partial risk sharing based on coalition formation and segmentation of society in a risky environment, without assuming limited commitment and imperfect information. Heterogenous individuals in a society freely choose with whom they will share risk A...

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...

This paper develops the idea that conspicuous consumption has an impact on social segmentation, i.e., on the partition of the society into communities. Even though agents do not value conspicuous goods per se, they are competing in a signalling race in order to benefit from social interactions...

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 voluntarily form risk-sharing groups in the absence of financial markets. We obtain a partition of...