Regulation fostering Managed Care alternatives in health insurance is spreading. This work reports on an experiment designed to measure the amounts of compensation asked by the Swiss population (in terms of reduced premiums) for Managed-Care type restrictions in the provision of health care. It...

Regulation fostering Managed Care alternatives in health insurance is spreading. This work reports on an experiment designed to measure the amounts of compensation asked by the Swiss population (in terms of reduced premiums) for Managed-Care type restrictions in the provision of health care. It...

We contrast alternative liability rules for social control of product risks when heterogeneous consumers considering purchasing a durable good due to cognitive errors and biases mispredict future product benefits and, thus, the extent of future product usage. Since the expected consumer harm...

In recent years, some Canadian politicians and powerful interest groups have issued increasingly vocal calls for dramatic regulatory interventions into the country's payment cards system. In particular, they have called for a "hard cap" price-controls on interchange fees, a ban on contractual...

We develop a rational expectations model in which an issuer purchases credit ratings sequentially, deciding which to disclose to investors. Opacity about contacts between the issuer and rating agencies induces potential asymmetric information about which ratings the issuer obtained. While the...

A data broker sells market segmentations created by consumer data to a producer with private production cost who sells a product to a unit mass of consumers with heterogeneous values. In this setting, I completely characterize the revenue-maximizing mechanisms for the data broker. In particular,...

We examine the value of sporting success to the German population at two major sport events in 2012, the UEFA European Championships and the London Olympic Games. Primary data were collected with a nationwide online survey of the German population (n=359). Using the contingent valuation method...

In this study, I estimate a causal effect of increased billing frequency on consumer behavior. I exploit a natural experiment in which residential water customers switched exogenously from bimonthly to monthly billing. Customers increase consumption by 3.5-5 percent in response to more frequent...

The reduced attractiveness of investments in reliable power plants under conditions of liberalized markets and the transition towards renewable energies has brought a discussion on capacity policies to Europe. We use a partial equilibrium model to compare important effects of three basic...

This paper provides methodologies for evaluating consumer benefits of infrastructure services using potentially observable information. We define benefit measures for consumers and, using general principles from the index number literature, derive alternative first and second order...