Luxury Beliefs: Signaling through Ideology?

This seminar has been organised by the Economics research group.

About the speaker

Our guest speaker is Dr Margareth Samahita.

Dr Samahita is Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, University College Dublin. She is also Research Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy.

Dr Samahita holds a PhD in Economics from Lund University. Her research is in behavioural economics. She uses theoretical, empirical and experimental methods to study individual decision-making. Her current research focuses on the effects of social influence on online behaviour and political preferences. More recently, she has been studying gender differences in economics and the causes and consequences of gender norms.

Research title

 "Luxury Beliefs: Signaling through Ideology?"

Abstract

 The concept of "luxury beliefs" has gained increasing attention in recent months. It captures the idea that, as status goods become more affordable, ideology has emerged as a new way to signal status.

I use a signaling game to derive a prediction related to the concept: given some beliefs are associated with high status, lower status individuals seek to pool with high status individuals by stating these beliefs.

I test this prediction in two online experiments using a series of statements commonly recognised to be "luxury beliefs".

I find that: i) luxury beliefs are not strongly associated with status, if anything these beliefs are only perceived to signal college attendance; and ii) I find no evidence of signaling using these beliefs in a (close to anonymous) online setting.