Private standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high-value foods. We analyze and compare impacts of three sustainability oriented standards – Fairtrade, Organic, and UTZ – on the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda. Using survey data and propensity score...

In this paper, I study markets where consumers are heterogeneous with respect to both their concerns for the quality of goods and the image associated with them. Consumers with a taste for quality lend a positive image to the product of their choice and thereby increase the product's value to...

This paper analyzes the effect of competition on a supermarket firm's incentive to provide product quality. In the supermarket industry, product availability is an important measure of quality. Using U.S. consumer price index microdata to track inventory shortfalls, I find that stores facing...

Several Japanese local governments started to add endogenous minimum prices to firstprice auctions in their public procurements. Any bid less than the endogenous minimum price is referred to as abnormally low and is excluded from the procurement procedure. The endogenous minimum price is...

This paper reports the theoretical and experimental results of auctions for public construction in which firms cut corners. We show that winning bids and qualities of the constructed buildings are both zero in equilibria if there are at least two firms whose initial cash balances are zero. The...

We study disclosure of information about the multidimensional state of the world when uninformed receivers' actions affect the sender's utility. Given a disclosure rule, the receivers form an expectation about the state following each message. Under the assumption that the sender's expected...

In the recent last years, in particular in the aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis, many countries initiated economic recovery plans with a major focus on stimulating green entrepreneurial activities to revive economic growth. Further, the recovery plans intend to improve a...

Hotelling’s famous ‘Principle of Minimum Differentiation’ asserts that two firms engaging in spatial competition with fixed prices will decide to locate at the same place. Interpreting spatial competition as modeling product differentiation, firms will thus offer products that are not...

We analyze how consumer myopia influences investment incentives into a technology that enables firms to track consumers' purchases and make targeted offers based on their preferences. In a two-period Hotelling setup firms may invest in customer-tracking technology. If a firm acquires the...

This paper investigates the existence of a possible media bias by analyzing the impact of automobile manufacturer's advertisements on automobile reviews in a leading German car magazine. By accounting for both endogeneity and sample selection using a two-step procedure, we find a positive impact...