 The Behavior of Others as a Reference PointFrancesco Bogliacino and
Pietro Ortoleva
Working Papers from Princeton University. Economics Department. Abstract: We study a model in which consumers are reference-dependent, modeled using prospect-theory, and their reference point is the average behavior of the society in that period. We show that in any of the equilibria of the economy after a finite number of periods the wealth distribution will become, and remain, either of perfect equality, or admit a ‘missing class’ (a particular form of polarization). We then study growth rates and show that, if we look at the equilibria with the highest growth, then the society with the highest growth rate is the one that starts with perfect equality. If we look at the equilibria with the lowest growth, however, then the society with a small amount of initial inequality is the one that attains the highest growth rate, while a society with perfect equality is the one with the lowest performance. All of these growth rates are weakly higher than the growth rate of a corresponding economy without reference-dependence. Keywords: Prospect Theory; Reference-dependence; Aspirations (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:econom:2014-4 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University. Economics Department. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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