The decision to introduce a national FuelWatch scheme provides a timely case study of `evidence-based- policy' making in Australia. The government based its decision on econometric work by the ACCC who refuse to release the data. They claim that their analysis is robust because it has been...

Experience from the United Kingdom and the United States suggests that expert evidence is often reshaped and repackaged by governments so that it supports existing policy rather than informing policy decisions. The Australian government based its decision to introduce FuelWatch on evidence in...

Consumer boycotts often provide a disciplinary mechanism against firms deviating from established social norms. Such actions tend to be organized by people through reference groups with a social mission. The intensity of the group identity is, however, private information. Therefore, the...

In a variety of purchasing situations, consumers may focus primarily on headline prices, ignoring the full costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a product or service contract. Even when this is the case, it is widely believed that intense competition would adequately protect consumers...

By April 2013, the FCC's recent bill-shock agreement with cellular carriers requires consumers be notified when exceeding usage allowances. Will the agreement help or hurt consumers? To answer this question, we estimate a model of consumer plan choice, usage, and learning using a panel of...

Consumer boycotts often provide a disciplinary mechanism against firms deviating from established social norms. Such actions tend to be organized by people through reference groups with a social mission. The intensity of the group identity is, however, private information. Therefore, the...

When firms' shrouding of charges, as in Gabaix and Laibson (2006), meets with consumers' salient thinking, as in Bordalo et al. (2013), this can have severe welfare implications. The ensuing excessive competition for headline prices tends to inefficiently bias consumers' choice towards...

Consumer boycotts often provide a disciplinary mechanism against firms deviating from established social norms. Such actions tend to be organized by people through reference groups with a social mission. The intensity of the group identity is, however, private information. Therefore, the...

Policymakers and scholars have in distributional conversations traditionally ignored consumer laws, defined as the set of consumer protection, antitrust, and entry barrier laws that govern consumer transactions. Consumer law is overlooked partly because tax law is cast as the most efficient way...

EU has to attain the strategic objectives for 2020: 20% of energy from renewable sources, cutting the emissions of greenhouse gases by 20% and diminishing the dependence on imported fuels, that is why in the last years European Commission has decided that MS should increase the flexibility of...