This paper focuses on a major difference between markets for physical goods and for services. It is argued that dishonest sellers of physical goods are eventually identified and forced to leave the market. In contrast, dishonest sellers of services can effectively mimic honest competitors and...

Consumers often cannot judge the quality of goods and services at the time of the purchase decision. The goodwill model explains how the market participants deal with this problem. It makes a distinction between markets for search goods, experience goods and credence goods. In markets for...

The Goodwill Model of the Competitive Market Allowing for Trust and Creating Jobs Consumers often cannot judge the quality of goods and services at the time of the purchase decision. The goodwill model explains how the market participants deal with this problem. It makes a distinction between...

Do environmental initiatives like carbon accounting provide a viable alternative to monetary calculation based on profit and loss? Economic insights about calculation and imputation suggest that they do not provide a reliable, rational guide to action. Non-monetary calculation of the...

The attention market involves competition in which platforms acquire time from consumers, with bundles of content and ads, and sell ads to marketers to deliver messages during that time. This paper shows that the attention market solves a transaction-cost problem that prevents efficient exchange...

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are exerting growing pressure on firms to eliminate product components (such as palm oil) that are harmful to the environment (such as rainforests) or replace such components with NGO-certified sustainable components. Under which conditions does NGO pressure...

Many believe that consumer-sourced reputational information about products would increasingly replace top-down regulation. Instead of protecting consumers through coercive laws, reputational information gleaned from the wisdom of the crowd would guide consumer decision making. There is now a...