Sociality and Behavioural Traits in Macroeconomics

Christopher Tsoukis (), Frédéric Tournemaine () and Edward John Driffill ()
Additional contact information
Christopher Tsoukis: Keele University
Frédéric Tournemaine: Chulalongkorn University
Edward John Driffill: Yale-NUS College

Chapter Chapter 3 in Social and Behavioural Macroeconomics, 2025, pp 89-120 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In this chapter, we explore the concept of social comparisons and how it has been formalised in the macroeconomic literature. Our aim is twofold: first, to understand how these sociological traits influence individual behaviour, and second, to demonstrate how these concepts can be effectively integrated into a basic economic framework in a simple manner. We begin from the related concepts of the pursuit of social status, the relative income hypothesis, rank comparisons, and “keeping up/catching with the Joneses”. Other prominent instances of social comparisons include conspicuous consumption, positional goods, and wealth-based comparisons. We further explore conspicuous leisure and status related to education or occupational choice. We show how all these effects can be formalised by appropriate extensions of the utility function (“other-regarding preferences”). Such comparisons generally involve negative externalities, which affect welfare adversely through “rat races”, a theme explored next. Refinements to the status motive are also considered, bringing it to embody loss aversion (or “differential status effects”—“pains” versus “gains”). Envy, altruism, self-esteem, aspirations, reference standards, and social norms are also considered. We conclude by considering the (alleged) “capitalist spirit”.

Keywords: Social status; Relative income hypothesis; Other-regarding preferences; Reference standard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-77748-6_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031777486

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-77748-6_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().