Consumers often have to rely on an expert's diagnosis to assess their needs. If the expert is also the seller of services, he may use his informational advantage to induce over-consumption. Empirical evidence suggests that over-consumption is a pervasive phenomenon in experts markets. We offer...

Advantageous (or propitious) selection occurs when an increase in the premium of an insurance contract induces high-cost agents to quit, thereby reducing the average cost among remaining buyers. Hemenway (1990) and many subsequent contributions motivate its advent by differences in risk-aversion...

French Abstract: La sélection avantageuse (ou propice) se produit lorsqu'une augmentation de la prime d'un contrat d'assurance incite les acteurs à coût élevé à démissionner, réduisant ainsi le coût moyen parmi les acheteurs restants. Hemenway (1990) et de nombreuses contributions...

What is the effect of future information on today's actions? The answer may help understand, or justify, low investment in the presence of costs, a preference for holding liquid money, self-insurance or precautionary savings motives, environmental preservation and global warming abatement...

When studying consumption choices, economists have often relied on the abstraction of a representative agent. Such an agent can indeed be shown to exist and to replicate the aggregate consumers' demand under standard, but not necessarily convincing assumptions (Kirman (1992)). There was also...