Conspicuous Consumption and Race

I was feeling down after my latest rejection at a journal.  To improve my spirits, I re-read a paper that makes me proud to call myself an economist ("Conspicuous Consumption and Race," by Charles, Hurst, and Roussanov). 

Here is the abstract:

Using nationally representative data on consumption, we show that Blacks and Hispanics devote larger shares of their expenditure bundles to visible goods (clothing, jewelry, and cars) than do comparable Whites. These differences exist among virtually all sub-populations, are relatively constant over time, and are economically large. While racial differences in utility preference parameters might account for a portion of these consumption differences, we emphasize instead a model of status seeking in which conspicuous consumption is used as a costly indicator of a household’s economic position. Using merged data on race and state-level income, we demonstrate that a key prediction of the status-signaling model -- that visible consumption should be declining in reference group income -- is strongly borne out in the data for each racial group.  Moreover, we show that accounting for differences in reference group income characteristics explains most of the racial difference in visible consumption.

I really like this paper.  I think it's a great example of how to successfully use simple economic theory to derive empirical predictions that can be readily tested in the data.  One additional result I would have liked to have seen is what happens using within-state variation in reference group income over time (rather than defining reference group income by averaging across years within states).

Comments

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