Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/98951 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 8215
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Previous research suggests a lower degree of positional concerns among people from poor countries. Yet the evidence is limited and most often builds on the assumption that people's reference groups are the same across all individuals. We conduct a survey experiment in urban Ethiopia that is modified to include multiplicity of reference groups. We estimate positional concerns considering various reference groups to test whether the low positional concerns found in the literature is due to misspecification of the reference groups. The results show a low degree of positional concern which is highly stable across different reference groups.
Subjects: 
reference groups
income comparison
experiment
JEL: 
D60
C90
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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