Individuals often deem market transactions in sex, human organs and surrogacy, among others, repugnant. Repugnance norms can be explained by appealing to social-status concerns. We study an exchange economy in which agents abhor consumption dominance: one’s social status is compromised if one consumes less of every good than someone else does. Dominance may be forestalled by partitioning goods into submarkets and then invoking the repugnance norms that proscribe trade across these submarkets. Dominance may also be forestalled if individuals strategically ‘overconsume’ some goods, interpreted as emergent status goods. When equilibria are multiple, there is scope for welfare-enhancing policies that coordinate on status goods.

人们常常认为性、人体器官和代孕等市场交易令人反感。厌恶规范可以通过诉诸社会地位问题来解释。我们研究了一种交换经济，在这种经济中，代理人厌恶消费主导地位：如果一个人对每一种商品的消费都比其他人少，那么一个人的社会地位就会受到损害。通过将商品划分为子市场，然后援引禁止跨这些子市场进行贸易的令人反感的规范，可以预防主导地位。如果个人战略性地“过度消费”某些商品（被解释为紧急状态商品），那么主导地位也可能会被阻止。当均衡是多重的时，就存在协调地位商品的福利增强政策的余地。