As argued by Omer Moav and Zvika Neeman in a 2012 paper (Moav taught at ISET in the past), boasting is a way to pretend that one has hidden income (“Saving Rates and Poverty: The Role of Conspicuous Consumption and Human Capital”, Economic Journal 122, pp. 933-956). While people may have a rough idea of the incomes of their neighbors, colleagues, friends, and other people they interact with, they usually do not know exactly how much they make.

There is a Georgian joke that goes: “Relatives are the people you see whenever their number changes”. In other words, relatives all tend to gather when any of them gets married, gives birth, or dies. As a result, we frequently observe Georgians organizing mass gatherings to either celebrate or mourn numerical “changes” in their families. While there is a recent trend among the wealthier and better-educated people to switch to more intimate, smaller events, the poorer rural people continue to arrange Georgian supra of monumental proportions.