We study collective decisions by time-discounting individuals choosing a common consumption stream. We show that with any heterogeneity in time preferences, utilitarian aggregation necessitates a present bias. In lab experiments three quarters of `social planners' exhibited present biases, and...

This article contrasts the secular and Catholic literature on consumerism and its implications for liberty. Three specific questions are considered: Is consumerism harmful to liberty? Is it a necessary consequence of a market economy? Who is responsible for consumerism? The article shows that...

The objective of this note is to revisit the meaningfulness of the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) and apply it to the recent debate on liberal paternalism and consumer protection. The CJT con-sists of two parts, (a) stating that a jury of experts is always more competent than a single expert given...

Online labor markets provide new opportunities for behavioral research, but conducting economic experiments online raises important methodological challenges. This particularly holds for interactive designs. In this paper, we provide a methodological discussion of the similarities and...

This paper focuses on the process of coalition formation conditioning the common decision to adopt a shared good, which cannot be afforded by an average single consumer and whose use cannot be exhausted by any single consumer. An agent based model is developed to study the interplay between...

Emerging markets (EMs) collectively represent more than half of the world population with rapidly increasing purchasing power. In spite of recent advances, consumer research of EMs is limited in scope and concept development and thus inadequately reflects EM realities in comparison with theories...

This paper addresses concerns that the U.S. payment system is not keeping up with the rest of the digital economy in providing new methods of payment that give consumers immediate access to and use of their deposits held in accounts with banks and other deposit-taking institutions ("banks" for...

We develop a vertical differentiation model to analyze welfare implications of environmental policies in a competitive market with production and consumption heterogeneity. Consumers with heterogeneous preferences choose between non-green and certified green products, while producers with...