Showing 1 - 10 of 51
We investigate the marketing practice of framing a price as a discount from an earlier price. We discuss two reasons why a discounted price---rather than a merely low price---can make a consumer more willing to purchase. First, a high initial price can indicate the product is high quality....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083448
We document the presence of multiple and varied constraints to small and medium firm growth. This presents both a practical problem for business training programs and a challenge to academic economists trying to identify mechanisms though which these programs may affect outcomes. External...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011184078
Lancasterian models of product differentiation typically assume a one-dimensional characteristics space. We show that standard results on prices and locations no longer hold when firms compete in a multi-characteristics space. In the location game with n characteristics, firms choose to maximize...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005123740
Policymakers often prescribe that microfinance institutions increase interest rates to eliminate reliance on subsidies. This strategy makes sense if the poor are rate insensitive: then microlenders increase profitability (or achieve sustainability) without reducing the poor’s access to credit....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504442
Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the presence and importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers issued by a major...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005497798
Data show that better creditor protection is correlated across countries with lower average stock market volatility. Moreover, countries with better creditor protection are observed to have suffered lower decline in their stock market indexes during the current financial crisis. To explain this...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10004969130
Models of shrouding predict that firms lack incentives to compete on add-on prices. Working with a large Turkish bank …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011168904
This paper generalizes the existing asymptotic single-factor model to address issues related to industry heterogeneity, default clustering and parameter uncertainty of capital requirement in US retail loan portfolios. We argue that the Basel II capital requirement overstates the riskiness of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083415
A quantitative investigation of financial intermediation in the U.S. over the past 130 years yields the following results : (i) the finance industry’s share of GDP is high in the 1920s, low in the 1950s and 1960s, and high again in the 1990s and 2000s; (ii) most of these variations can be...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083657
Over the last three decades there has been a dramatic increase in the size of the financial sector and in the compensation of financial executives. This increase has been associated with greater risk-taking and the use of more complex financial instruments. Parallel to this trend, the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011083928