Most of the empirical literature on consumption behaviour over the last decades has focused on estimating Euler equations. However, there is now consensus that data-related problems make this approach unfruitful, especially for answering policy relevant issues. Alternatively, many papers have...

In an overlapping generations maximization framework with consumers, whose information on uncertain future income realizations is front loaded, a closed form aggregate consumption function with CRRA preferences is derived. To have a closed form solution we assume that consumers solve their...

In this paper, we propose a reputation-signalling model of demand for consumer goods containing pro-social characteristics such as a 'fair trade' or 'organic' certification. We show that reputation signalling can reverse price reactions resembling the crowding-out of pre-existing motives for...

We consider optional TOU (time-of-use) pricing for residential consumers as an alternative to a single TOU or flat rate structure offered by a publicly regulated electricity supplier. A general equilibrium model is developed and used to explore and quantify the effects of optional pricing on...

4207 In a recent paper, Fack et al. (2019, American Economic Review) convincingly argue and theoretically demonstrate that there may be strong incentives for students to play non-truth-telling strategies when reporting preferences over schools, even when the celebrated deferred acceptance...

Der Sachverständigenrat für Verbraucherfragen hat erstmals ein breit angelegtes Gutachten zur Lage der Verbraucher:innen in Deutschland vorgelegt. Gert G. Wagner, Mitglied im Sachverständigenrat für Verbraucherfragen, stellt aus seiner persönlichen Sicht ausgewählte Analysen, Ergebnisse...

This paper addresses a general problem with the use of surveys as source of information about the state of an economy: Answers to surveys are highly dependent on information that is publicly available, while only additional information that is not already publicly known has the potential to...

Umfragen zur Einschätzung der wirtschaftlichen Lage sind wichtige Instrumente für die Erstellung von Konjunkturprognosen. Denn ein großer Teil des Wissens über den Zustand einer Wirtschaft liegt nicht gebündelt vor, sondern verteilt sich auf eine Vielzahl von Unternehmen und Haushalten....

Die Kennzeichnung von Lebensmitteln ist zu einem viel diskutierten Element der Ernährungs- und Verbraucherpolitik geworden. Dabei existiert eine große Vielfalt von Labels, die auf sehr verschiedene Eigenschaften der Lebensmittel ausgerichtet und mit unterschiedlichsten Instrumenten der...

Moral hazard in expert diagnoses is more complicated in credence goods markets because ex-post verification of service optimality is usually not possible. We provide an experimental framework to investigate expert and consumer behavior as well as market efficiency in a setting in which experts...