Countries in the hamster’s wheel?: Nurkse- Duesenberry demonstration effects and the determinants of saving.

Abstract

Throughout the world, stable regional patterns relating to private savings are hard to access. This article revisits the hypothesis that, as there is evidence of emulation patterns between consumers, there might be international (macroeconomic) “emulation”. We test demonstration effect theories exploiting international data on savings, incomes, and means of global exposure. We use two methods of media communication given that their penetration peaked at different times in the sample period: TV and internet were a means of discovering foreign consumption standards. With the resulting country panels, we find some evidence in favour of a statistically significant negative association for the demonstration effect.

Keywords

• private saving rates
• demonstration effect
• behavioral economics