Many countries have liberalized their residential electricity markets or are considering to do so. Liberalization provides consumers with more freedom of choice but also leads to higher choice complexity as consumers face a much larger number of different electricity contracts to choose from. We...

Passive behavior is ubiquitous - even when facing various alternatives to choose from, people commonly fail to take decisions. This paper provides evidence on the cognitive foundations of such "passive choices" and studies implications for policies that encourage active decision-making. In an...

Passive behavior is ubiquitous - even when facing various alternatives to choose from, people commonly fail to take decisions. This paper provides evidence on the cognitive foundations of such "passive choices" and studies implications for policies that encourage active decision-making. In an...

Passive behavior is ubiquitous - even when facing various alternatives to choose from, people commonly fail to take decisions. This paper provides evidence on the cognitive foundations of such "passive choices" and studies implications for policies that encourage active decision-making. In an...

We study the effects of two widely observed behavioral policy interventions⸻the simplification of complex decisions and the implementation of high-quality defaults. Based on a laboratory experiment featuring a dual-task paradigm, we demonstrate that these policies do not only improve decisions...

We study the effects of two widely observed behavioral policy interventions⸻the simplification of complex decisions and the implementation of high-quality defaults. Based on a laboratory experiment featuring a dual-task paradigm, we demonstrate that these policies do not only improve decisions...

Dynamic defaults for recurring purchases determine what happens to consumers enrolled in a product or service who take no action at a decision point. Consumers may face automatic renewal, automatic switching, or non-purchase defaults. Privately optimal dynamic defaults depend on the...

Corporate taxation is a perennially controversial topic in American politics. In fact, it may be the tax policy controversy that most Americans are aware of and even have an opinion about. Nevertheless, the purpose of corporate taxation is unclear in popular, or even for that matter, academic,...

The "iteration argument" presented in Schlicht (1996) shows that the allocation of property rights may generate inefficiencies, contrary to what the "Coase Theorem", as commonly understood, asserts. The argument may be summarized by saying that markets (and bargaining) cease to function properly...

Crucial to the analysis in this paper is the Coasian insight that external costs result from conflicting uses of scarce resources and that responsibility for these costs should not be attributed exclusively to polluters as required by the polluter pays principle (PPP). The paper argues that the...