On the topic of globalization and economic integration, I want to address five subjects: The first is the extent of global integration that has taken place and that lies in prospect. The second is the broad case for economic integration and why domestic and global efforts to promote that case...

An analysis of consumer’s decision making indicates that the weights used for the regional variables considered and included in an index should not vary across regions. Given this, a regional index is computed for the 10 major regions of Greece assuming that all variables incorporated in it...

This paper summarizes and highlights different methodological approaches to behavioural economics in the context of the conventional economic wisdom and the implications of these different methodological approaches for financial literacy, related institutional change, and public policy....

Moderne Marktordnungen schützen den Verbraucher vor Schäden und sichern den Leistungswettbewerb und die Funktionsfähigkeit von Märkten. Wettbewerbsorientierte Verbraucherpolitik und verbraucherorientierte Wettbewerbspolitik ergänzen sich dabei. Die Verhaltensökonomik zeigt allerdings, dass...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

Many legal rules—ranging from common-law contract doctrines to modern consumer protection regulation—are designed to protect individuals from their own mistakes. Scholars have neglected a core difficulty facing such policies: we humans are a motley bunch, and we are defined in part by our...

Many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous "win-win" opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money. This overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy-using capital stock with two types of market failures: first,...

We show how ownership of the firm by its customers, as well as nonprofit status, can prevent firms from using contractual terms that take advantage of consumer biases. By eliminating an outside residual claimant with control over the firm, these alternatives to investor ownership reduce the...

We present a critique of Behavioral Economics, the dominant approach to reforming the regulation of retail credit, and propose a new approach to managing uncertainty in consumer lending. This new approach draws on a different model of decision-making, Distributed Cognition, to improve contract...