Ordinal vs cardinal status: Two examples

Ennio Bilancini and Leonardo Boncinelli ()

Economics Letters, 2008, vol. 101, issue 1, pages 17-19

Abstract: 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 status with cardinal status [Frank, R.H., The Demand for Unobservable and Other Positional Goods. American Economic Review, (75):101-116, 1985.] and viceversa [Clark, A. and Oswald, R.J., Comparison-Concave Utility and Following Behavior in Social and Economic Settings. Journal of Public Economics, (70):133-155, 1998.].

Keywords: D0; Status; Social; comparison; Ordinality; Cardinality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V84 ... 7f647ddffe26ea3966e9
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Ordinal vs Cardinal Status: Two Examples (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:101:y:2008:i:1:p:17-19

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is edited by E. Maskin

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().