EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Conspicuous consumption and generation replacement in a model of perpetual youth

Ron Wendner

Journal of Public Economics, 2010, vol. 94, issue 11-12, 1093-1107

Abstract: This paper investigates household decisions in an overlapping generations model in which individual utility depends on a weighted average of consumption of one's peers. In contrast to representative agent economies, the consumption externality generally affects savings and growth rates. The effects critically depend on the rate at which labor productivity changes with age. For a high (low) rate, the externality lowers (raises) the steady state propensity to consume out of total wealth. The optimal allocation can be decentralized by a (reverse) unfunded social security system if the rate of labor productivity decline is high (low). In contrast to discrete time OLG models, the optimal steady state capital income tax is zero, in spite of the externality.

Keywords: Consumption; externality; Labor; productivity; Gradual; retirement; Overlapping; generations; Keeping; up; with; the; Joneses; Optimal; taxation; Capital; taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2727(10)00111-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:94:y:2010:i:11-12:p:1093-1107

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-07
Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:94:y:2010:i:11-12:p:1093-1107