Growth, Habit Formation, and Catching-up\ with the Joneses

Jaime Alonso-Carrera (), Jordi Caballe () and Xavier Raurich

UFAE and IAE Working Papers from Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC)

Abstract: When habits are introduced multiplicatively in a capital accumulation model, the consumers' objective function might fail to be concave. In this paper we provide conditions aimed at guaranteeing the existence of interior solutions to the consumers' problem. We also characterize the equilibrium path of two growth models with multiplicative habits: the internal habit formation model, where individual habits coincide with own past consumption, and the external habit formation (or catching-up with the Joneses) model, where habits arise from the average past consumption in the economy. We show that the introduction of external habits makes the equilibrium path inefficient during the transition towards the balanced growth path. We characterize in this context the optimal tax policy.

Keywords: endogenous growth; habit formation; consumption externalities; optimal taxation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-dge and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://pareto.uab.es/wp/2001/49701.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growth, habit formation, and catching-up with the Joneses (2005)
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:aub:autbar:497.01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UFAE and IAE Working Papers from Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Xavier Vila ().