Economic mechanisms related to the provision of product safety are explored, with particular attention paid to the structure of consumers' information. The case of perfect information, of experience goods (for which consumers detect product safety after consumption) and of credence goods (where...

Building on the empirical case of the EU-US trade dispute on hormone-treated beef an analytical framework, where consumers are imperfectly informed about the quality of imports, is used to investigate the welfare effect of trade liberalisation in the case of a credence good. Opening the domestic...

This paper explores the link between quality, cost and concentration. Using concentration and cost data and product quality indicators for 2,244 products in over eighty industries in 1997 and 2002 in the US, a two-stage, ordered probit, random effects estimation explores the impact of...

This paper examines the incentive of atomistic agricultural producers within a specific geographical region to differentiate and collectively market products. We develop a model that allows us to analyze the market and welfare effects of the main types of real-world producer organizations, using...