A Feast in Time of Plague
Debt-Financed Spending Spree during the Pandemic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12067728 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anna Kurysheva (0000-0001-8334-4594, Southern Federal University, Rostov-na-Donu, Russia, corresponding author), Andrei Vernikov (0000-0003-1561-9458, Institute of Economics RAS, Moscow, Russia) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 400-418 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Forum for Social Economics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0736-0932 • E-ISSN: 1874-6381 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07360932.2023.2259619 |
| OpenAlex | W4386845243 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
The paper explores the nexus between household consumption, financialization, and socio-economic policy. We focus on the recent episode of debt-financed buying of passenger cars which took place in Russia in 2020–21, amidst the Covid pandemic. We collect statistics on car sales, car loans and household income, and construct metrics to gauge leveraged car buying. The latter is found to be relatively inelastic to the price of a car and personal income. Two specific factors are highlighted: (a) speculation, alias hedging, to which households resort under financial instability; and (b) government policy aiming to facilitate household access to car loans. Conceived as a palliative against the pain of economic downturn, loan availability might instead bolster speculative demand and inflate price bubbles. The paper contributes to the body of literature on the sociology of consumption, household financialization, and the political economy of lending
Consumer debt · Consumer spending · Consumption (sociology · Credit card · Debt · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Financialization · Household debt · Macroeconomics · Personal consumption expenditures price index · Personal income · Recession · Social science · Sociology · Speculation · COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Finance
Post-Keynesian Economics
Covid-19 Generation
Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers' Demand
Theory of the Consumption Function
The Theory Of The Leisure Class
Credit and income mobility in Russia
An expectational view of consumer spending prospects
The effects of car access on employment outcomes for welfare recipients
The Consumer Society
Too much mortgage debt? The effect of housing financialization on housing supply and residential capital formation
Finance, social value, and the rhetoric of GDP
Precedence and Conspicuousness in Car Consumption
Moonshine, money, and the politics of liquidity in rural Russia
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |