How Do We Choose Our Identity? A Revealed Preference Approach Using Food Consumption
利用印度食品消费数据，提出一种显示性偏好方法来揭示民族和宗教身份选择，发现群体地位、显著性和遵循群体行为的经济成本都会影响身份选择。
Are identities fungible? How do people come to identify with specific groups? This paper proposes a revealed preference approach, using food consumption to uncover ethnic and religious identity choices in India. We first show that consumption \of identity goods responds to forces suggested by social identity research: group status and group salience. Moreover, identity choices respond to the cost of following the group’s prescribed behaviors. We propose and estimate a demand system to quantify the identity changes that followed India’s 1991 reforms. While social identity research has focused on status and salience, our results suggest that economic costs also play an important role.