How did I get this first?

A VoxEU study which confirms my recent self observations of networking and consumption:

The second model is the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ model, in which individual utility depends on the average consumption of peers (and not necessarily the visible one). The third model is one where risks are shared among members of the reference group, which creates correlation among their consumptions with peer effects being, effectively, a spurious manifestation of the risk sharing agreements. We find empirical support for a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ model – based on our empirical analyses, we can rule out models of conspicuous consumption as well as full or partial risk sharing. Hence, our results point towards an inter-temporal distortion of the spending profile rather than a tilting of consumption towards luxury and conspicuous goods.

I wasn't first, I was a blogger following the debate, these folks were first but they had to do the detailed study.  

This is all about an eight year effort in science to get at that boundary between combinatorics and Newton's grammar.  It is happening in botany, economics, physics, neurology, and fundamental graph theory.  In botany they study root and branch formation as an adaptable network.  MIT was doing some of the more direct network theories, but the new math uses entropy maximization, (reducing redundancy)  to understand economies of scale in queueing over finite networks.  Agents try to close the network loops  When agents do this, they create a typical consumption semi-random sequence, the set of baskets that keep the network stable.