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Social Inefficiency of Free Entry with Status Effects
Author(s) -
WOO WAI CHIU
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/jpet.12016
Subject(s) - inefficiency , consumption (sociology) , economics , social status , microeconomics , econometrics , sociology , social science
Free markets may support too many or too few firms. Traditional analysis does not provide unambiguous conclusion in this respect. This paper introduces status effects of consumption into the model. It shows that a sufficiently significant status effect tends to support too many firms. Two conditions are required for this result. First, complementary effect between status and consumption is not significant. Second, a higher average status consumption level makes everyone more difficult to get the same degree of gain in status. Both conditions appear to be realistic.