Standard-of-Living Aspirations and Economic Cycles*

Past experiences and social forces have been incorporated into tastes in order to analyze various microeconomic issues. We use these extended preferences to model the making of standard-of-living aspirations and study their effect on macroeconomic variables. We concentrate first on consumption behavior when there is habit formation. Such behavior is in accordance with several empirical facts and has important policy implications. Secondly, long term issues are analyzed assuming that children become habituated to a standard-of-living whilst still with their parents. This introduces a powerful mechanism responsible for long-term oscillations. We investigate in the third part whether habits applied to wage formation explain key labor market stylized facts.