Smartphone app designers often use behavioral design to influence users, increase sales, and boost advertising revenue. Behavioral design relies on elements ranging from app appearance to black-box algorithms and personalization. It commonly exploits behavioral biases, such as the lack of...

Perceived urgency and regret are common in many sequential search processes; for example, sellers often pressure buyers in search of the best offer, both time-wise and in terms of potential regret of forgoing unique purchasing opportunities. theoretically, these strategies result in anticipated...

We study the interplay between quality provision and consumer search in a search market where firms may design products of inferior quality to promote them to naive consumers who fail to fully understand product characteristics. We derive an equilibrium in which both superior and inferior...

We study the implications of biased consumer beliefs for search market outcomes in the seminal framework due to Diamond (1971). Biased consumers base their search strategy on a belief function which specifies for any (true) distribution of utility offers in the market a possibly incorrect...

Der vorliegende Beitrag betrachtet die wettbewerbs- und medienökonomischen Eigenschaften und Effekte von algorithmischen Such- und Empfehlungssystemen und ihrer Regulierung. Dabei werden nach einer einführenden Klarstellung des Sinns und der Notwendigkeit solcher Systeme in der digitalen Welt...

This paper analyses the equilibrium effects of individual information filters. Information is modelled as advertisements which are distributed across a population of consumers with heterogeneous preferences. An advertisement that provides knowledge about a product with little or no utility for a...

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 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...