Relative Consumption, Working Time, and Trade Unions
Laszlo Goerke and
Inga Hillesheim
No 4318, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo
Abstract:
Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive markets. We show that trade unions which are unable to internalise the externality can nevertheless mitigate the resulting distortion. The reason is that wages above the market clearing level are only feasible if people work less and, therefore, fewer hours than in a competitive market. Accordingly, the theoretical model establishes that trade unions can have a welfare-enhancing role in a world with relative consumption effects.
Keywords: externality; hours of work; relative consumption; trade union (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 J22 J51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4318.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Relative consumption, working time, and trade unions (2013) 
Working Paper: Relative Consumption, Working Time, and Trade Unions (2013) 
Working Paper: Relative Consumption, Working Time, and Trade Unions (2013) 
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:ces:ceswps:_4318
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().