IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/htr/hcecon/427.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Television in Household Debt: Evidence from the 1950's

Author

Abstract

We examine whether advertising increases household debt by studying the initial expansion of television in the 1950’s. Exploiting the idiosyncratic spread of television across markets, we use microdata from the Survey of Consumer Finances to test whether households with early access to television saw steeper debt increases than households with delayed access. Results indicate that television increases the tendency to borrow for household goods and to carry debt. Television is associated with higher debt levels for durable goods, but not with total non-mortgage debt. The role of media in household debt may be greater than suggested by existing research.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew J. Baker & Lisa M. George, 2009. "The Role of Television in Household Debt: Evidence from the 1950's," Economics Working Paper Archive at Hunter College 427, Hunter College Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:htr:hcecon:427
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.hunter.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/RePEc/papers/HunterEconWP427.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parsons, Donald O, 1980. "The Decline in Male Labor Force Participation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 117-134, February.
    2. Kiminori Matsuyama, 2002. "The Rise of Mass Consumption Societies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(5), pages 1035-1070, October.
    3. Zeldes, Stephen P, 1989. "Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 305-346, April.
    4. Gary S. Becker & Kevin M. Murphy, 1993. "A Simple Theory of Advertising as a Good or Bad," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(4), pages 941-964.
    5. T. Paul Schultz, 2004. "Demographic Determinants of Savings: Estimating and Interpreting the Aggregate Association in Asia," Working Papers 901, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    6. Stefano DellaVigna & Matthew Gentzkow, 2010. "Persuasion: Empirical Evidence," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 643-669, September.
    7. Gene M. Grossman & Carl Shapiro, 1984. "Informative Advertising with Differentiated Products," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(1), pages 63-81.
    8. David I. Laibson & Andrea Repetto & Jeremy Tobacman, 1998. "Self-Control and Saving for Retirement," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1), pages 91-196.
    9. Daylian M. Cain & George Loewenstein & Don A. Moore, 2005. "The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 1-25, January.
    10. Avinash Dixit & Victor Norman, 1978. "Advertising and Welfare," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(1), pages 1-17, Spring.
    11. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2001. "The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    12. Stephen Dunn & Steven Pressman, 2006. "The lasting economic contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 179-190.
    13. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    14. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2006. "Advertising Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 93-113, March.
    15. Tiago V. de V. Cavalcanti & José Tavares, 2008. "Assessing the "Engines of Liberation": Home Appliances and Female Labor Force Participation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 81-88, February.
    16. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1986. "Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 796-821, August.
    17. Angus Deaton & Christina Paxson, 2000. "Growth and Saving Among Individuals and Households," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(2), pages 212-225, May.
    18. Joseph G. Altonji & Aloysius Siow, 1987. "Testing the Response of Consumption to Income Changes with (Noisy) Panel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 293-328.
    19. Christopher D. Carroll, 1997. "Buffer-Stock Saving and the Life Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 1-55.
    20. Stuart Fraser & David Paton, 2003. "Does advertising increase labour supply? Time series evidence from the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(11), pages 1357-1368.
    21. Hall, Robert E & Mishkin, Frederic S, 1982. "The Sensitivity of Consumption to Transitory Income: Estimates from Panel Data on Households," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 461-481, March.
    22. Stephen Dunn & Steven Pressman, 2005. "The Economic Contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 161-209.
    23. Martin Browning & Annamaria Lusardi, 1996. "Household Saving: Micro Theories and Micro Facts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 1797-1855, December.
    24. Norman Loayza & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Luis Servén, 2000. "What Drives Private Saving Across the World?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(2), pages 165-181, May.
    25. Konishi, Hideo & Sandfort, Michael T., 2002. "Expanding demand through price advertisement," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 965-994, September.
    26. Stephen P. Dunn & Steven Pressman, 2007. "The lasting economic contributions of John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., vol. 29(2), pages 179-190, January.
    27. Christopher D. Carroll & Byung-Kun Rhee & Changyong Rhee, 1994. "Are There Cultural Effects on Saving? Some Cross-Sectional Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 685-699.
    28. Kihlstrom, Richard E & Riordan, Michael H, 1984. "Advertising as a Signal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 427-450, June.
    29. Runkle, David E., 1991. "Liquidity constraints and the permanent-income hypothesis : Evidence from panel data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 73-98, February.
    30. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2008. "Preschool Television Viewing and Adolescent Test Scores: Historical Evidence from the Coleman Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 279-323.
    31. Blundell, Richard & Pashardes, Panos & Weber, Guglielmo, 1993. "What Do We Learn About Consumer Demand Patterns from Micro Data?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 570-597, June.
    32. Nelson, Philip, 1974. "Advertising as Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 729-754, July/Aug..
    33. Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Luis Servén, 1998. "World saving: trends and theories," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 25(2 Year 19), pages 191-215, December.
    34. Matthew Gentzkow, 2006. "Television and Voter Turnout," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 931-972.
    35. Ben S. Bernanke, 1984. "Permanent Income, Liquidity, and Expenditure on Automobiles: Evidence from Panel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 587-614.
    36. Lisa M. George, 2009. "National Television And The Market For Local Products: The Case Of Beer," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 85-111, March.
    37. Bagwell, Kyle, 2007. "The Economic Analysis of Advertising," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 28, pages 1701-1844, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. links for 2009-10-05
      by Brad DeLong in Grasping Reality with the Invisible Hand on 2009-10-05 13:04:08
    2. Television, the root of the crisis?
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2009-12-04 21:15:00
    3. The BBC & household debt
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2009-10-02 18:01:15
    4. Uses of illiteracy
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2014-09-10 18:58:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blanka Škrabić Perić & Petar Sorić, 2018. "A Note on the “Economic Policy Uncertainty Index”," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(2), pages 505-526, June.
    2. Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni, 2016. "Tear in the Iron Curtain: The Impact of Western Television on Consumption Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 25-41, March.
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/vbu6kd1s68o6r34k5bcm3iopv is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Clément Bellet, 2017. "Essays on inequality, social preferences and consumer behavior [Inégalités, préférences sociales et comportement du consommateur]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03455045, HAL.
    5. Kim, Woojin, 2022. "Television and American consumerism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    6. Simon P. Anderson & Øystein Foros & Hans Jarle Kind, 2018. "Competition for Advertisers and for Viewers in Media Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 34-54, February.
    7. Viktor Slavtchev & Michael Wyrwich, 2017. "TV and Entrepreneurship," Jena Economics Research Papers 2017-007, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/vbu6kd1s68o6r34k5bcm3iopv is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Jiménez, Juan Luis & Perdiguero, Jordi & Gutiérrez, Inmaculada, 2022. "Bias in media coverage of antitrust actions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    10. Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2015. "Competition and uncertainty in a paper’s news desk," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 116(1), pages 77-93, September.
    11. Clément Bellet, 2017. "Essays on inequality, social preferences and consumer behavior [Inégalités, préférences sociales et comportement du consommateur]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03455045, HAL.
    12. Chadi, Adrian & Hoffmann, Manuel, 2021. "Television, Health, and Happiness: A Natural Experiment in West Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 14721, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Kyeonggook Francis Park & Robert Seamans & Feng Zhu, 2021. "Homing and platform responses to entry: Historical evidence from the U.S. newspaper industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 684-709, April.
    14. Hagen, Johannes & Malisa, Amedeus, 2022. "Financial fraud and individual investment behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 593-626.
    15. Garz, Marcel, 2018. "Effects of unemployment news on economic perceptions – Evidence from German Federal States," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 172-190.
    16. Benedetto Molinari & Francesco Turino, 2018. "Advertising and Aggregate Consumption: A Bayesian DSGE Assessment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(613), pages 2106-2130, August.
    17. Slavtchev, Viktor & Wyrwich, Michael, 2023. "The effects of TV content on entrepreneurship: Evidence from German unification," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 696-721.
    18. Lisa Oberlander, 2021. "TV exposure and food consumption patterns–evidence from Indonesia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(11), pages 2701-2721, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Salvatore Piccolo & Piero Tedeschi & Giovanni Ursino, 2018. "Deceptive Advertising with Rational Buyers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(3), pages 1291-1310, March.
    2. George-Marios Angeletos & David Laibson & Andrea Repetto & Jeremy Tobacman & Stephen Weinberg, 2001. "The Hyberbolic Consumption Model: Calibration, Simulation, and Empirical Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 47-68, Summer.
    3. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Hattori, Keisuke & Higashida, Keisaku, 2014. "Misleading advertising and minimum quality standards," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-14.
    5. Laurent Cavenaile & Pau Roldan-Blanco, 2021. "Advertising, Innovation, and Economic Growth," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 251-303, July.
    6. Kelley, Clare & Lanot, Gauthier, 2002. "Consumption Patterns Over Pay Periods," Economic Research Papers 269469, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    7. Justin P. Johnson & David P. Myatt, 2006. "On the Simple Economics of Advertising, Marketing, and Product Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 756-784, June.
    8. Anderson, Simon P. & Gabszewicz, Jean J., 2006. "The Media and Advertising: A Tale of Two-Sided Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 567-614, Elsevier.
    9. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2006. "Advertising Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 93-113, March.
    10. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2013. "The Advertising Mix for a Search Good," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 69-83, April.
    11. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, October.
    12. Ziliak, James P., 1998. "Does the choice of consumption measure matter? An application to the permanent-income hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 201-216, February.
    13. Keisuke Hattori & Keisaku Higashida, 2012. "Misleading advertising in duopoly," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(3), pages 1154-1187, August.
    14. Wang, Shinn-Shyr & Stiegert, Kyle W., 2006. "The Duopolistic Firm with Endogenous Risk Control: Case of Persuasive Advertising and Product Differentiation," Staff Paper Series 496, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    15. Guofang Huang & Matthew Shum & Wei Tan, 2019. "Is pharmaceutical detailing informative? Evidence from contraindicated drug prescriptions," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 135-160, June.
    16. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September.
    17. Simon P. Anderson & Federico Ciliberto & Jura Liaukonyte & Régis Renault, 2016. "Push-me pull-you: comparative advertising in the OTC analgesics industry," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1056, November.
    18. Campbell, John Y. & Cocco, Joao F., 2007. "How do house prices affect consumption? Evidence from micro data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 591-621, April.
    19. Ivan Pastine & Tuvana Pastine, 2000. "Coordination in Markets with Consumption Externalities : The Role of Advertising and Product Quality," Working Papers 0003, Department of Economics, Bilkent University.
    20. Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni, 2016. "Tear in the Iron Curtain: The Impact of Western Television on Consumption Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 25-41, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Television; Debt; Advertising; Life Cycle;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:htr:hcecon:427. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jonathan Conning (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dhcunus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.