Competing for Happiness: Attitudes to Competition, Positional Concerns and Wellbeing

We consider a model of economic growth with altruistic agents who care about their consumption and the disposable income of their offspring. The agents' consumption and the offspring's disposable income are subject to positional concerns. We show that, if the measure of consumption-related positional concerns is sufficiently low and/or the measure of offspring-related positional concerns is sufficiently high, then there is a unique steady-state equilibrium, which is characterized by perfect income and wealth equality, and all intertemporal equilibira converge to it. Otherwise, in steady-state equilibria, the population splits into two classes, the rich and the poor; under this scenario, in any intertemporal equilibrium, all capital is eventually owned by the households that were the wealthiest from the outset and all other households become poor.

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Positional Concerns Survey

PsycTESTS Dataset ◽

10.1037/t22860-000 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Elina Lampi ◽

Katarina Nordblom

Keyword(s):

Positional Concerns

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How much do others matter? Explaining positional concerns for different goods and personal characteristics

Journal of Economic Psychology ◽

10.1016/j.joep.2012.11.006 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 34 ◽

pp. 61-77 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Inga Hillesheim ◽

Mario Mechtel

Keyword(s):

Personal Characteristics ◽

Positional Concerns

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Do You Prefer Having More or More than Others? Survey Evidence on Positional Concerns in France

Journal of Economic Issues ◽

10.1080/00213624.2008.11507206 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 1145-1158 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Gilles Grolleau ◽

Sandra Saïd

Keyword(s):

Positional Concerns

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Public debt, positional concerns, and wealth inequality

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization ◽

10.1016/j.jebo.2019.11.029 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 170 ◽

pp. 96-111

Author(s):

Kirill Borissov ◽

Andrei Kalk

Keyword(s):

Public Debt ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Positional Concerns

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Positional concerns and framing effects in financial preferences

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance ◽

10.1016/j.qref.2017.09.002 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 68 ◽

pp. 183-189 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Latifa Barbara ◽

Gilles Grolleau ◽

Assia Houfaf Khoufaf ◽

Youcef Meriane ◽

Naoufel Mzoughi

Keyword(s):

Framing Effects ◽

Positional Concerns

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Looking for status appeal? Act interested in your child’s education

International Journal of Social Economics ◽

10.1108/ijse-09-2015-0241 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 44 (3) ◽

pp. 377-399

Author(s):

Salvador Contreras

Keyword(s):

Parental Involvement ◽

Income Distribution ◽

Design Methodology ◽

Reference Group ◽

Data Set ◽

Content Type ◽

National Education ◽

Time Investment ◽

Positional Concerns ◽

Investment Choices

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study how positional concerns influence a parent’s time investment decisions of her/his child. Design/methodology/approach The author presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of household positional and non-positional time investment choices in the education of her/his child. Findings The author shows that a parent who is mindful of her/his relative position in the income distribution will use her/his time investment choices to influence her/his perceived status. The theoretical model predicts that visible time investment increases as members of her/his reference group move up in rank. The author shows that moving down in rank lowers utility. The author employs National Education Longitudinal Studies (1988) data set to test the model prediction and shows that visible time invested in child’s education is explained by place on the income distribution. Originality/value The author extends the positional literature to account for parent time investment in her/his child’s education. The work suggests that time investment in one’s child’s education is based on more than altruistic preferences and resources. It leaves open the possibility that perceived social standing influences a household’s time investment in their child’s education. From a policy perspective, the findings provide a new way to think about drivers of parental involvement.

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