1 option
Observability and Social Interactions in Consumption / Tullio Jappelli, Luigi Pistaferri.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Jappelli, Tullio.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w35575.
- NBER working paper series no. w35575
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2026.
- Summary:
- Using a randomized survey experiment in the Italian Survey of Consumer Expectations, we study how observability and commonality shape responses to a â¬1,000 employer bonus. Making an idiosyncratic bonus observable to coworkers lowers the marginal propensity to consume by 3 percentage points. Conditional on observability, extending the bonus to all coworkers raises it by 6 percentage points. Under a social-interactions model, the latter effect implies a social-interaction parameter of 0.16 and a multiplier of 1.2. Thus, consumption responses depend not only on resources but also on whether income shocks are private, public, or shared within a salient peer group.
- Notes:
- August 2026.
- Print version record
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.