A Study On Speculative Consumption And Its Economic Effects

Speculative consumption happens when the consumer's intention is to earn additional profits. It is a quotidian phenomenon in our lives nowadays, and it becomes more and more important to the consumers' choices, the operating activities and the macroeconomic operations. Based on the researches of predecessors, I bring forward the concept, the characteristics, the motivity and the types of Speculative consumption. By studying the typical speculative consumption, I do some research on the affection of Speculative consumption on economy activities and macroeconomic fluctuation. Then I draw a brief conclusion and give some advices on guiding Speculative consumption and ironing the economic fluctuation. The main points of this paper are listed as below:Speculative consumption is so ubiquitous that studying this kind of consume can provide the micro-foundation for macroeconomic theory, supply the theoretical basis for economic decisions and be important for microcosmic decision-making, the enterprise management and the government macro-control.The development of consumption theory can be divided into four steps. These are the consumption theory, the conservation consumption theory, the selective consumption theory, the uncertain consumption theory.The goal of Speculative consumption is to earn additional proceeds, but it is different from investment. In order to earn additional proceeds, Speculative consumption can be carried out by changing the consumption time, the consumption place or the commodity itself. Therefore, the Speculative consumption is rich in elasticity of demand, thus it has more uncertainty and riskiness. The initial aim of Speculative consumption is to earn additional interests or to avoid losing, also it can realize the self-value. Consumers would like to trade-off the different consume choices and maximize the revenue. If we reasonably develop and utilize the Speculative consumption, it will contribute the economy growth. According to the different rules, the Speculative consumption can be identified into different types, such as homochronous consumption or Inter-temporal consumption, the same commodity consumption or the different commodity consumption, the same district consumption or the different district consumption, consumption considering or no considering the technical improvement, consumption considering or no considering the price change, etc.The Speculative consumption, basing on the price change, is that when the consumer has the anticipation of price changing he will change the choice of commodity or service to achieve more utility. The reason is that the changed price has changed the consumer's budget, and this will change the consumer's utility. All the factors including the consumer, the commodity, the macroeconomics and some uncertain factors will affect the Speculative consumption. The reason is that the consumer wants to earn additional profits, but the consumption will change due to the uncertainty of over consumption or sluggish consumption.It is hard for consumer to evaluate the network effect and utility he will get when he try to buy a network production, so this kind of consumption is provided with uncertain character. The uncertainty has three aspects. The first is the limited knowledge of network size; the second is the limited knowledge of network development mode; the third is the limited knowledge of "the first consume" of the network production. The uncertainty of network size would bring the consumer with additional utility or losing utility. In the same way, the limited knowledge of network function and network development mode will bring the consumer the same result.Speculative consumption can induce significant economic fluctuation. Generally speaking, consuming fluctuate comes mainly from speculative consumption because the common consumption is steady. One main goals of macroeconomic policy is to strengthen the active effect and avoid the negative effect of consumption fluctuate.