Conspicuous Consumption and Overlapping Generations?

Ron Wendner

EERI Research Paper Series from Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels

Abstract: This paper investigates household decisions, and optimal taxation in an overlapping generations model in which individual utility depends on a weighted average of consumption of ones peers — a “keeping up with the Joneses” consumption externality. In contrast to representative agent economies, the consumption externality generally a?ects steady state savings and growth rates. The nature of the externality’s impact, however, critically depends on the rate at which labor productivity declines with age. For a (strongly enough) declining labor productivity (or when people gradually retire), the consumption externality lowers the steady state propensity to consume out of total wealth. The opposite holds for a constant labor productivity. The market economy can be decentralized by a (reverse) unfunded social security system if the rate of labor productivity decline is high (low). In contrast to previous results, the optimal steady state capital income tax is zero, in spite of the consumption 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)
JEL-codes: D91 E21 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2009-05-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eeri.eu/documents/wp/EERI_RP_2009_05.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Conspicuous Consumption and Overlapping Generations (2009)
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:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2009_05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EERI Research Paper Series from Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia van Hove ().