Recent theoretical contributions have suggested consumption externalities, or peergroup effects, as a potential explanation for some of the puzzles in macroeconomics and finance. However, the empirical relevance of peer effects for intertemporal consumption choice is a completely open question....

The adequacy of household saving for retirement has become a policy issue all around the world. The UK and US have been in the vanguard of those countries that have tried to encourage retirement saving by providing tax-favoured treatment for particular savings accounts. We consider empirical...

We show in a public goods experiment on three continents that conditional cooperation is a universal behavioral regularity. Yet, the number of conditional cooperators and the extent of conditional cooperation are much higher in the U.S.A. than anywhere else.

Der Dioxin-Skandal bei Futtermitteln, aber auch die fehlerhafte und interessengeleitete Beratung beim Kauf von Finanzdienstleistungen hat die Verbraucherpolitik in Misskredit gebracht. In der öffentlichen Debatte werden zunehmend rigidere Vorschriften für die Anbieter gefordert, aber auch mehr...

In this article we propose a two stage procedure to model demand decisions by customers who are balancing several dimensions of a product. We then test our procedure by analyzing the behavior of buyers from an Austrian price comparison site. Although in such a market a consumer will typically...

In this paper we consider the implications of relative consumption externalities in the Blanchard-Yaari overlapping generations framework. Unlike most of the macroeconomic literature that studies this question, the differences between agents, and, thus, in their relative position, persist in...

This paper aims at analyzing the implications of individuals' consumption jealousy on the dynamic structure of a two-sector model economy. We find that status-seeking substantially influences both, the long-term properties and the adjustment behavior of the model. Depending on the status motive,...

This article studies the use of different distribution channels as an instrument of price discrimination in credence goods markets. In credence goods markets, where consumers do not know which quality of the good or service they need, price discrimination proceeds along the dimension of quality...

A publisher uses an honor system for selling a newspaper in the street. The customers are supposed to pay, but they can also pay less than the price or not pay at all. We conduct an experiment to study honesty in this market. The results show that appealing to honesty increases payments, whereas...

We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's...