| Abstract: |
Dating back to Veblen (1899), theoretical and empirical studies about
conspicuous consumption have largely stipulated associations between social
status and income. This paper focuses on the supply of status and tests the
underlying assumption by using a data on the attractiveness ratings for the
World Cup 2010 athletes from the social networking website
BeautifulPeople.com. Treating the data as a team-player panel, we find that
the 32 country fixed effects are positively associated with GDP per capita,
even after controlling for the team's ex ante Fédération Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA) rank, Gini coefficient, and number of internet
users. Furthermore, there is no obvious correlation between each country's GDP
per capita and its FIFA rank, which suggests that income is related to these
"status" fixed effects through some direct channel. In other words, there is
indeed a link between a country's social status and its economic development.
We caution though that income is not an exclusive driver of status, as
ability, age, game outcome and race also matter. |