Working with a panel dataset of of OECD countries over the decade 1994-2004, we examine linkages between cross-border trade and FDI in the service sectors. We first develop a consistent analytical framework for the application of the gravity model jointly to services trade and commercial...

This Paper studies the consequences of price discrimination in a market for experts’ services. In the case of experts markets, where the expert observes the intervention that a consumer needs to fix his problem and also provides a treatment, price discrimination proceeds along the dimension of...

In this article we propose a two stage procedure to model demand decisions by customers who are balancing several dimensions of a product. We then test our procedure by analyzing the behavior of buyers from an Austrian price comparison site. Although in such a market a consumer will typically...

This paper studies price competition between experts and discounters in a market for credence goods. While experts can identify a consumer's problem by exerting costly but unobservable diagnosis effort, discounters just sell treatments without giving any advice. The unobservability of diagnosis...

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high-skilled workers. This option serves as an insurance against unemployment caused by labour market frictions and hence increases the incentives for education. We show within a matching model that reducing the start-up...

In recent years various contributions have analyzed the credence goods problem under a wide variety of assumptions yielding equilibria exhibiting various degrees of inefficiencies and fraud. The variety of results has fostered the impression that the equilibrium behaviour of experts and...