Wealth and Status: Analyzing the Perceived Attractiveness of 2010 FIFA World Cup Players

Chi, Feng and Yang, Nathan (2010): Wealth and Status: Analyzing the Perceived Attractiveness of 2010 FIFA World Cup Players.

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.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Attractiveness, discrimination, fixed-effects estimation, social status, standard-of-living.
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D3 - Distribution > D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology ; Social and Economic Stratification; A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A14 - Sociology of Economics

References

Bagwell, L.S. and Bernheim, D (1996). Veblen Effects in a Theory of Conspicuous Consumption. American Economic Review 86.

Bowles, S. and Park, Y (2005). Emulation, Inequality, and Work Hours: Was Thorsten Veblen Right? The Economic Journal 115.

Chao, A. and Schor, J (1998). Empirical testss of status consumption: Evidence from women's cosmetics. Journal of Economic Psychology 19.

Charles, Hurst and Roussanov (2009). Conspicuous Consumption and Race. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124.

Corneo, G. and Jeanne, O (1997). Conspicuous consumption, snobbism and conformism. Journal of Public Economics 66.

Corneo, G. and Jeanne, O (1999). Pecuniary emulation, inequality and growth. European Economic Review 43.

Friedman, D. and Ostrov, D (2008). Conspicuous consumption dynamics. Games and Economic Behavior 64.

Fryer Jr., R. and Torelli, P (2010). An empirical analysis of 'acting white.' Journal of Public Economics 94.

Han, Nunes and Dreze (2010). Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence. Journal of Marketing 74.

Hitsch, Hortacsu, and Ariely (2010). Matching and Sorting in Online Dating. American Economic Review 100.

Hopkins, E. and Kornienko, T (2004). Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status. American Economic Review 94.

Lekwa, Rice and Hibbing (2007). The Correlates of Community Attractiveness. Environment and Behavior 39.

Mandel, B (2009). Art as an Investment and Conspicuous Consumption Good. American Economic Review 99.

Moav, O. and Neeman, Z (2010). Status and poverty. Journal of the European Economic Association 8.

Moldovanu, Sela and Shi (2007). Contests for status. Journal of Political Economy 115.

O'Reilly et. al (2006). Might how you look influence how well you are looked after? A study which demonstrates that GPs perceive socioeconomic gradients in attractiveness. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 11.

Swami, V. and Hernandez, E (2008). A beauty-map of London: Ratings of the physical attractiveness of women and men in London's boroughs. Personality and Individual Differences 45.

The Economist (July 10, 2010). Exit Strategies. Veblen, T (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. MacMillan & Co.: London.

von Rueden, Gurven and Kaplan (2008). The multiple dimensions of male social status in an Amazonian society. Evolution and Human Behavior 29.