We demonstrate that interpersonal comparisons lead to "keeping up with the Joneses"-behavior. Using annual household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the causal effect of changes in reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived...

Rising inequality in income, wealth and consumption has received a good deal of public attention in the past years. At the same time, also macroeconomists are more and more interested in inequality as they have expanded their models to incorporate heterogeneity in the household sector. We supply...

We analyse the decline of household saving rates in the bottom half of the income distribution in Germany since the 2000s, which allowed for only moderately increasing consumption inequality, despite sharply rising income inequality. We combine survey data on household consumption with our own...