A century ago, Thorstein Veblen introduced socially contingent con-sumption into the economic literature. This paper complements the scarceempirical literature by testing his conjecture on South African householddata and nds that Black and Coloured households spend relatively moreon visible...

Was the increase in income inequality in the US due to permanent shocks or merely to anincrease in the variance of transitory shocks? The implications for consumption and welfaredepend crucially on the answer to this question. We use CEX repeated cross-section data onconsumption and income to...

This paper estimates the wealth effects on consumption in the euro area as a whole. Ishow that: (i) financial wealth effects are relatively large and statistically significant;(ii) housing wealth effects are virtually nil and not significant; (iii) consumptiongrowth exhibits strong persistence...

This paper explores the statistical properties of household consumption-expenditure budgetshares distributions (HBSDs) —defined as the share of household total expenditurespent for purchasing a specific category of commodities— for a large sample of Italianhouseholds in the period 1989-2004....

In many countries, TV viewers have access to more and more TVchannels. We study whether people can cope with this and watch the amount of TVthey find optimal for themselves or whether they are prone to over-consumption. Wefind that heavy TV viewers do not benefit, but instead report lower life...

In this study we analyze perception of authenticity by visitors of South Tyrol's museum of archeology, best known as Otzi museum, in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Italy). With the help of factor analysis we individuate two factors related to authenticity and study the determinants of the...

Les recherches en sociologie du tourisme ont mis en évidence la quête d’authenticité qui pousse les individus à rechercher une expérience naturelle et intense qui contribuera à leur divertissement et à leur évasion. Néanmoins, les institutions culturelles et touristiques utilisent de...

Research in sociology of tourism indicate that people increasingly engage in cultural activities. They search for enjoyment and authentic experiences. Meanwhile, cultural places such as museums tend to rely on Information Technologies (IT) to support the exhibition of cultural artifacts and...

"Campus-Report" heißt die Radiosendung der Universitäten Heidelberg, Mannheim, Karlsruhe und Freiburg. Die Reportagen über aktuelle Themen aus Forschung und Wissenschaft werden montags bis freitags jeweils um ca. 19.10h im Programm von Radio Regenbogen gesendet. (Empfang in Nordbaden: UKW...