We demonstrate that in models where agents have concerns for status the model predictions can drastically change depending on whether status is modelled as an ordinal or cardinal magnitude. As a proof, we show that two well known theoretical findings are not robust to the substitution of ordinal...

We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for goods to be normal when utility functions are differentiable and strongly quasi-concave. Our condition is equivalent to the condition proposed by Alarie et al. (1990), but it is easier to check: it only requires to compute the minors associated...

In this paper we study games where the space of player types is atomless, action spaces are second countable, and payoffs functions satisfy the property of strict single crossing in types and actions. Our main finding is that in this class of games every Nash equilibrium is essentially strict....

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a typical structure of interaction in human societies. In spite of a long tradition dealing with the matter from different perspectives, the emergence of cooperation or defection still remains a controversial issue from both an empirical and a theoretical point of view....

In this paper we study the impact of redistributive policies when agents can signal their relative standing by spending on a conspicuous good. In particular, we analyze how the shape of the status function (i.e. how relative standing is computed and evaluated) may affect the equilibrium outcome...

In this paper we examine the problem of dynamic adverse selection in a stylized market where the quality of goods is a seller’s private information. We show that in equilibrium all goods can be traded if a simple piece of information is made publicly available: the size of the informed side of...

We investigate the effects of introducing a linear labor income tax under the assumptions that individuals have concerns for social status, that they can signal their relative standing by spending on a conspicuous good, and that the tax revenue is redistributed by means of lump sum transfers. We...

If preferences are rational and continuous, then strict convexity implies that the demand correspondence is single-valued (e.g. Barten and B¨ohm, 1982, lemma 7.3). We show that if, in addition, preferences are strictly monotone then the converse is also true, namely single-valuedness of the...

If preferences are rational and continuous, then strict convexity implies that the demand correspondence is single-valued (e.g. Barten and Böhm, 1982, lemma 7.3). We show that if, in addition, preferences are strictly monotone then the converse is also true, namely single-valuedness of the...

In this paper we examine the problem of dynamic adverse selection in a stylized market where the quality of goods is a seller’s private information. We show that in equilibrium all goods can be traded if a simple piece of information is made publicly available: the size of the informed side of...