{
  "id": "wealth-effect.spending",
  "term": "wealth effect",
  "sense": "spending",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 18,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "Members of a collective self buying more when the value of what they own rises, though they sell nothing, because they read their reach as larger.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "reach.action",
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "member.social",
      "buy.economic",
      "value.magnitude",
      "rise.movement",
      "sell.economic",
      "nothing.absence",
      "read.information",
      "large.size"
    ],
    "interaction": "A rise in held value widens the self-read of reach without widening any window that can be spent; members act on the read, so spending follows a number that was never turned into money.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "spending from a reading, not a receipt",
      "reach widened on paper and used in fact"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Economists estimate the wealth effect as the change in household spending per dollar change in wealth, with many estimates of a few cents per dollar.",
      "domain": "economics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "wealth.range",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "wealth is the range itself; the wealth effect is acting on its read value"
    },
    {
      "id": "consumer-confidence.measured",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "confidence is the asked self-read; the wealth effect is spending moved by held value"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "wealth effect",
    "wealth effects"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-wealth-effect.spending"
}