CONSPICUOUS consumption is everywhere, but it’s not the same everywhere. People living in certain cities spend far more than the national average on particular goods and services that they believe will enhance their social standing.

In New York City, favored items include luxury watches and shoes. In Boston, the status signal of choice is tuition to a private school. Clothes are the go-to goods in Dallas. Wearing high-end makeup says you’ve arrived in Phoenix. In San Francisco, one telling sign is women’s sport coats and tailored jackets. And in Washington, D.C., encyclopedias and reference books are top status markers. Go figure.

I study urban economies for a living and what I found made me wonder if the different profiles cities present to the world have as much to do with their consumption patterns as with their local industries. To find out, I used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey to track differences among cities in household spending from 2007 to 2012.

The survey dates to the 1800s but has only recently broken out detailed information on the spending habits, incomes and demographics of its respondents in the nation’s metropolitan areas. With a collaborator, Hyojung Lee, a doctoral candidate in urban planning, I tracked differences in purchases of almost 1,000 items, from watches to loaves of bread — and even alimony. We divided this data into items that are conspicuously consumed, like cars, TVs, shoes and jewelry, and the more humdrum purchases of day-to-day life. Then we compared cities.