Essays on relative consumption, peers, labor supply and migration

This volume consists of three chapters. The first chapter presents a model of interdependent preferences in which utility depends on the individual's rank within peers, the rank of the peer-group itself, and leisure. It offers explanations to two empirical puzzles - (1) The recent increase in the number of hours worked by the more productive US workers relative to the less productive, and (2) The non-monotonic empirical relationship between happiness and absolute income. The strength of the proposed model, which also nests the classical model of absolute consumption, is its ability to explain two interesting empirical puzzles simultaneously.;The second chapter applies the model developed earlier to study rural-to-urban migration in developing countries. It offers explanations to several regularities in rural-to-urban migration that cannot be explained solely by wage differentials or risk diversification arguments. It also generates some interesting results including - (1) Rural-to-urban migration even when there is no wage differentials or risk differences between the rural and urban areas, (2) The possibility of reverse migration, and (3) Existence of multiple equilibriums of rural-to-urban migration including ones where the most productive individuals migrate, the least productive individuals migrate, and where both the most and the least productive individuals migrate.;The third chapter presents a novel dataset of British patent extensions granted between 1617 and 1841. Analysis of the dataset reveals three noticeable trends for the patents granted extensions during this period. The success rate of extension petitions, the length of extensions granted, and the value of the patents receiving extensions were all declining over time. Changes in the lobbying scenario is introduced as a possible explanation to the observed trends. In particular, a shift in the lobbying power from the patent owners to the manufacturers opposing such extensions may have caused the observed trends. An examination of the lobbying activities related to extension petitions of James Watt's Steam Engine and Richard Champion's Plymouth Porcelain patents is also conducted here. It reveals lobbying to be an integral part of the patent extension process.