Celebrations as Social Investments: Festival Expenditures, Unit Price Variation and Social Status in Rural India
@article{Rao2001CelebrationsAS, title={Celebrations as Social Investments: Festival Expenditures, Unit Price Variation and Social Status in Rural India}, author={Vijayendra Rao}, journal={The Journal of Development Studies}, year={2001}, volume={38}, pages={71 - 97} }
Festival expenditures amount to over 15 per cent of a household's annual expenditures in rural India. Yet they have never been studied by economists. This article uses both qualitative and quantitative data from a case study of three South Indian villages to show that festivals are important public goods in the village, but neither a pure entertainment motive nor an altruistic desire to contribute to a public event seems to explain their size. Households which spend money on festivals…
181 Citations
Poverty and Public Celebrations in Rural India
- Economics
- 2001
This article examines the paradox that very poor households spend large sums of money on celebrations. Using qualitative and quantitative data from South India, it demonstrates that expenditures on…
Pure Entertainment or Social Harmony? Understanding Private Returns to Social Spending on Household Ceremonies in China
- Economics
- 2011
Recent social spending inflation in China has led to its growth rate far exceeding that of income and other consumption. In this paper, we estimate private returns to social spending, such as higher…
Accounting for Social Spending Escalation in Rural China
- Economics
- 2011
It has been widely recognized that the poor spends a significant proportion of their income on social spending even at the expense of basic consumption. What are the motives behind the observed…
Religious Festivals and Economic Development: Evidence from Catholic Saint Day Festivals in Mexico
- EconomicsSSRN Electronic Journal
- 2021
Societies worldwide spend substantial resources celebrating religious festivals. How do festivals influence economic and social outcomes? We study Catholic patron saint day festivals in Mexico,…
FESTIVITIES AND SAVING PRACTICE: AN IMPACT STUDY OF RURAL POOR OF TUMKUR DISTRICT
- Economics
- 2020
Festival expenditures amount to over 15 percent of a household’s annual expenditures in rural India. Yet the area has studied by few. This paper uses quantitative data from the Tumkur district…
Understanding the determinants of festival attendee spending: the role of cultural capital
- Business
- 2020
The purpose of this paper is to explore which factors determine visitor spending at a cultural festival, focusing particularly on cultural capital variables.,The case study is the Valdivia…
Wedding Celebrations as Conspicuous Consumption
- EconomicsThe Journal of Human Resources
- 2004
We examine the determinants of expenditures on wedding celebrations by rural Indian families. We develop a status signaling model of wedding celebrations where the size of the celebration signals the…
Characterizing social networks and their effects on income diversification in rural Kerala, India
- Economics
- 2017
Peer Effects, Risk Pooling, and Status Seeking: What Explains Gift Spending Escalation in Rural China?
- Economics
- 2012
It has been widely documented that the poor spend a significant proportion of their income on gifts even at the expense of basic consumption. We test three competing explanations of this…
Better Together – or not? Community Participation, Consumption Smoothing and Household Head Employment in Indonesia
- Economics
- 2006
This paper analyzes whether participation in formal and informal community activities helped household in Indonesia mitigating the impact of the 1998 economic crisis and increasing the probability of…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 40 REFERENCES
Cents and Sociability: Household Income and Social Capital in Rural Tanzania
- EconomicsEconomic Development and Cultural Change
- 1999
The authors construct a measure of"social capital"in rural Tanzania, using data from the Tanzania Social Capital and Poverty Survey (SCPS), a large-scale survey that asked individuals about the…
PRICE HETEROGENEITY AND “REAL” INEQUALITY: A CASE STUDY OF PRICES AND POVERTY IN RURAL SOUTH INDIA
- Economics
- 2000
This paper, based upon a case-study of three Indian villages, studies whether households within the same market pay different prices for identical goods. It is found that not only are unit prices for…
The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India
- EconomicsJournal of Political Economy
- 1993
Dowries in South Asia have steadily risen over the last 40 years and now often amount to over 50 percent of a household's assets. This paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind this increase.…
Risk and Insurance in Village India
- Economics
- 1991
The full insurance model is tested using data from three poor, high-risk villages in the semi-arid tropics of southern India. The model presented here incorporates a number of salient features of the…
A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influences on Price
- Economics, BusinessJournal of Political Economy
- 1991
This note tries to explain why many successful restaurants, plays, sporting events, and other activities do not raise prices even with persistent excess demand. My approach assumes that demand by a…
Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation
- Economics
- 1997
This paper presents evidence that "social capital" matters for measurable economic performance, using indicators of trust and civic norms from the World Values Surveys for a sample of 29 market…
Social capital: implications for development theory, research, and policy
- Economics
- 2000
In the 1990s the concept of social capital defined here as the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively enjoyed a remarkable rise to prominence across all the social science…
On Kin Groups and Wages in the Ghanaian Labour Market
- Economics
- 1999
A common feature of African societies is that individuals belong to kin groups which impose reciprocal obligations upon their members. In the modern economy, where large scale production is required,…
Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India
- Economics
- 1988
List of illustrations List of tables Preface 1. The village as a corporate group 2. The circumstances of village organization 3. Kottapalle 4. The social response to open-field husbandry 5. The…
The role of dowries and daughters' marriages in the accumulation and distribution of capital in a South Indian Community
- Economics
- 1992
This article reports a south Indian case of anti-female bias among the propertied elite in a relatively advanced agrarian economy that is increasingly differentiated. Women have become the vehicles…