Am Abend des 30. Oktober 1938 löste eine Radiosendung in den USA eine Massenhysterie aus (vgl. Wells 1974: 342). Das Hörspiel "Krieg der Welten" wurde von ca. sechs Millionen Menschen verfolgt, zwei Millionen von ihnen glaubten, die Sendung basiere auf aktuellen Geschehnissen. Die darauf...

The behavioral relevance of non-binding defaults is well established. While most research has focused on decision makers' responses to a given default, we argue that this individual decision making perspective is incomplete. Instead, a comprehensive understanding of default effects requires to...

The behavioral relevance of non-binding default options is well established. While most research has focused on decision makers' responses to a given default, we argue that this individual decision making perspective is incomplete. Instead, a comprehensive understanding of the foundation of...

When a decision-maker's attention is limited, her decisions depend on what she focuses on. This gives interested parties an incentive to manipulate not only the substance of communication but also the decision-maker's attention allocation. This paper models such attention manipulation. In its...

This paper considers a firm that has to delegate to an agent, such as a mortgage broker or a security dealer, the twin tasks of approaching and advising customers. The main contractual restriction, in particular in light of related research in Inderst and Ottaviani (2007), is that the firm can...

This paper analyzes the implications of the inherent conflict between two tasks performed by direct marketing agents: prospecting for customers and advising on the product's suitability for the specific needs of customers. When structuring sales-force compensation, firms trade off the expected...

The current study examines the way people deal with financial decisions. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of financial consulting in the decision making process and the complex decision dynamics in the run up to a decision. Data for this study were collected through a series of...

Die Situation von Kleinanlegern* auf dem Finanzmarkt ist in Deutschland weitgehend unerforscht. Mit Blick darauf beleuchtet der folgende Beitrag auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse eines qualitativen soziologischen Forschungsprojekts drei wesentliche Dimensionen ihrer Anlagepraxis. Es geht erstens um...

Identifying whether hyperbolic advertising claims influence consumers is important for consumer protection, but differentiating mere "puffery" from misleading advertising is not straightforward. We conducted a pre-registered experiment to determine whether pseudo-technical advertising claims...

We review the literature on credence goods since Dulleck and Kerschbamer (Journal of Economic Literature 44(1), 5-42, 2006). We consider various markets for credence goods and briefly discuss evidence on the extent of fraud. We then review theoretical and empirical contributions on the...