In his 1999 book, "Luxury Fever," Robert H. Frank (the Cornell economist, not yours truly) argued that the rich were driving America into debt.

Soaring incomes and luxury consumption at the top, he argued, was inspiring non-rich Americans to try to keep up with the much richer Joneses. They were going into debt, mortgaging their lives, working brutal hours and devoting their precious times to material consumption rather than happiness.

"The runaway spending at the top has been a virus," he wrote, "one that's spawned a luxury fever that, to one degree or another, has all of us in its grip."

A new paper by two economists at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business offers some new statistical evidence for the "trickle-down spending" theory.

According to the paper, by Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse, cited in this week's Economist, rising consumption by rich households induces the non-rich to consume more.