Working Paper: NBER ID: w25693
Authors: David Atkin; Eve Colson; Moses Shayo
Abstract: 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 (e.g. beef and pork) responds to forces suggested by social-identity research: group status and group salience, with the latter proxied by inter-group conflict. Moreover, identity choices respond to the cost of following the group’s prescribed behaviors. We propose and estimate a modified demand system to quantify the identity changes that followed India’s 1991 economic reforms. Notably, our estimated identity changes correlate with changes in vote shares for ethnic and religious parties. While social-identity research has focused on status and salience, our results suggest that economic costs also play an important role.
Keywords: identity; food consumption; revealed preference; India; economic reforms
JEL Codes: D12; D74; D91; O1; Z1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| intergroup conflict (D74) | salience of religious identities (Z12) |
| salience of religious identities (Z12) | adherence to religious food taboos (Z12) |
| economic costs associated with following group norms (Z13) | adherence to group norms (C92) |
| adherence to group norms (C92) | consumption patterns (D10) |
| identity shifts (J62) | voting behavior (D72) |