Commodities do not only serve the purpose of satisfying direct needs in the production and con-sumption process. Some of them can also be used to display social status and to affect the position of an individual in society. This paper addresses the question under which circum-stances...

We analyze the impact of status preferences on technological progress and long-run economic growth. For this purpose, we extend the standard relative wealth approach by allowing the two components of the representative household's wealth, physical capital and shares, to differ with respect to...