There is growing evidence that low-quality customer service prevails in the mobile telecommunications industry. In this paper we provide theoretical support to this empirical observation by using simple game theoretical models where inefficient low-quality service levels are part of an...

In late June 2013, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, announced plans to provide restaurant health inspection data to Yelp.com for publication on their popular online consumer-review forum. These data were already publicly available on the city's website. I utilize this partnership to test...

This study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on firms' choices of product quality. In 1998, Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to be displayed in restaurant windows. We show that the grade cards cause (i) restaurant health...

This article evaluates the quality of Internet banking services in France, and shows quality differences that result from underdevelopment of services such as "informational” or “customer relationships management” services. The certification process is then presented as a solution to...

La protección de los consumidores de telefonía móvil está cobrando relevancia, en parte porque la satisfacción de los consumidores en nuestro país es inferior a la de otros países europeos. Históricamente la normativa de protección al consumidor se ha centrado primero en mediciones...

We show that as nonbanks' market share increases in a local residential mortgage market, the quality of mortgage services in the market improves. Two instrumental variable analyses exploiting (1) stress tests conducted by the Federal Reserve, and (2) mortgage industry surety bonds required by...

We study the empirical relationship between hygiene conditions in restaurants and their food quality rated by professional reviewers. Using evidence from the UK, we show that this relationship is negative and statistically significant. So, a higher food quality rating is generally associated...

In credence goods markets, experts have better information about the appropriate quality of treatment than their customers. Experts may exploit their informational advantage by defrauding customers. Market institutions have been shown theoretically to be effective in mitigating fraudulent expert...

We embed the principal-agent model in a model of spatial differentiation with correlated consumer preferences to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing and quality allocation (PPQ), whereby duopoly firms charge different prices and offer different qualities to different...