There is a need to identify household debt behaviour in different age cohorts even in countries without prominent household debt problems so that the measures for vulnerable groups can be made. Authors used multilevel mixed effect analysis to test the effect of age and other variables on demand...

Beim vierten Verbraucherforschungsforum an der Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen entwickelten Wissenschaftler aus verschiedenen Disziplinen gemeinsam eine Agenda für die Verbraucherforschung in der digitalen Welt. Im Zeitgespräch dokumentieren wir die Impulsreferate zu wesentlichen...

We study markets for sensitive personal information. An agent wants to communicate with another party but any revealed information can be intercepted and sold to a third party whose reaction harms the agent. The market for information induces an adverse sorting effect, allocating the information...

Many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous “win-win” opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money. This overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy-using capital stock with two types of market failures: first,...

Moderne Marktordnungen schützen den Verbraucher vor Schäden und sichern den Leistungswettbewerb und die Funktionsfähigkeit von Märkten. Wettbewerbsorientierte Verbraucherpolitik und verbraucherorientierte Wettbewerbspolitik ergänzen sich dabei. Die Verhaltensökonomik zeigt allerdings, dass...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

We develop a dynamic model to study the interaction between obfuscation and investor sophistication in retail financial markets. Taking into account different learning mechanisms within the investor population, we characterize the optimal timing of obfuscation for a profit-maximizing monopolist....

Research in the field of behavioral economics indicates that humans stumble in their decisionmaking in predictable ways that can often be corrected by a gentle nudge from the appropriate regulatory authority. Two new books -- Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational and Richard Thaler and Cass...

Over the last year it has been unexceptional to watch the consumer coverage of problems related to the natural disasters created by the hurricanes. Outside of the Southern states, the national media and leaders of other consumer organizations spent a very large amount of time warning the...

The Rule of Reason, which has come to dominate modern antitrust law, allows defendants the opportunity to justify their conduct by demonstrating “procompetitive” effects. Seizing the opportunity, defendants have begun offering increasingly numerous and creative explanations for their...