Showing 1 - 10 of 197
We explore the consequence of quality unpredictability for the welfare benefit of new products, using recent developments in recorded music as our context. Digitization has expanded consumption opportunities by giving consumers access to the "long tail" of existing products, rather than simply...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012456005
This paper develops a model of evolving standards for academic publishing. It is motivated by the increasing tendency of academic journals to require multiple revisions of articles and by changes in the content of articles. Papers are modeled as varying along two quality dimensions: q and r. The...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012470945
Quality certification is a common tool to reduce asymmetric information and enhance trust in marketplaces. Should the certificate focus on seller inputs such as fast shipping, or include output measures such as consumer ratings? In theory, incorporating output measures makes the certificate more...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012814449
This essay reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on quality disclosure and certification. After comparing quality disclosure with other quality assurance mechanisms and describing a brief history of quality disclosure, we address three key theoretical issues: (i) Why don't sellers...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012463006
methodological challenges by measuring standardization via national penetration of ISO 9000, allowing standardization to manifest via …-signaling augmenting country-pair trade. Yet, ISO-rich nations (most notably European) benefit the most from standardization, while ISO …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460527
This paper shows that endogenous cycles can arise when contracts between firms and their customers are incomplete and when products are experience goods. Then firms invest in the quality of their output in order to establish a good reputation. Cycles arise because investment in reputation causes...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455977
This study examines the effect of experience and knowledge on weather insurance adoption. First, we conduct insurance games with farmers, and find that the treatment improves real insurance take-up by 46%. The effect is not driven by changes in risk attitudes and perceived probability of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012456276
In a field experiment in Uganda, a free distribution of three health products lowers subsequent demand relative to a sale distribution. This contrasts with work on insecticide-treated bed nets, highlighting the importance of product characteristics in determining pricing policy. We put forward a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458495
Cigarettes are experience goods - most of their utility value only gets revealed when one consumes them. We hypothesize a three phase consumer life cycle for experience goods. Consumers initially do not know their utility from the good or their preferences for particular characteristics, and may...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012459352
We examine misconduct in credence good markets with price taking experts. We propose a market-level model in which price-taking experts extract surplus based on the value of their firm's brand and their own skill. We test the predictions of the model using sales complaint data for exclusive and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460054