A large literature has analyzed pricing inefficiencies in health insurance markets due to adverse selection, typically assuming informed, active consumers on the demand side of the market. However, recent evidence suggests that many consumers have information frictions that lead to suboptimal...

Are product standards protectionism in disguise? This paper estimates the costs of non-compliance with US product standards, using a new database on US import refusals from 2002 to 2012. We find that import refusals significantly decrease exports to the United States. This trade reducing effect...

When other measures for material welfare are scarce or unreliable, the use of average stature and body mass index (BMI) values is common. BMI reflects the current difference between calories consumed, calories required for work, and to withstand the physical environment. This study evaluates...

Strategic delegation to an independent regulator with a pure consumer standard improves dynamic regulation by mitigating ratchet effects associated with short term contracting. A pure consumer standard alleviates the regulator's myopic temptation to raise output after learning the firm is...

Contributing to the literature on the consequences of behavioral biases for market outcomes and institutional design, we contrast producer liability and minimum quality standard regulation as alternative means of social control of product-related torts when consumers are heterogeneously...

We study the international protection of consumer data in a model where data usage benefits firms at the expense of their customers. We show that a multinational firm does not balance this trade-off efficiently if its data usage lacks (full) transparency or if consumers’ privacy preference...

We model firms' quality disclosure and pricing in the presence of cursed consumers, who fail to be sufficiently skeptical about undisclosed quality. We show that neither competition nor the presence of sophisticated consumers necessarily protect cursed consumers from being exploited....

We investigate the effect of an EU-wide consumer protection regulation on consumer trust as well as consumer behavior. The Unfair Commercial Practice Directive (UCPD) was implemented by EU member states between 2007 and 2010. We utilize data from the Special and Flash Eurobarometer for the years...

To help German households and firms with exploding energy costs, the German government is about to implement a new transfer scheme called "gas price brake." A unique feature of this energy price relief measure is that both households and the industry receive a transfer that increases in one's...

We quantify the prevalence of undisclosed influencer posts on Twitter across a large set of brands based on a unique data set of over 100 million posts. We develop a novel method to detect undisclosed influencer posts and find that 96% of influencer posts are not disclosed as such. Despite...