Arbeitspapier

Competition over Cursed Consumers

We model firms’ quality disclosure and pricing in the presence of cursed consumers, who fail to be sufficiently skeptical about undisclosed quality. We show that neither competition nor the presence of sophisticated consumers necessarily protect cursed consumers from being exploited. Exploitation arises if markets are vertically differentiated, if there are few cursed consumers, and if average product quality is high. Three common policy measures aimed at consumer protection, i.e. mandatory disclosure, third party disclosure and consumer education may all increase exploitation and decrease welfare. Even where these policies improve overall welfare, they often lead to a reduction in consumer surplus.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 7046

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Noncooperative Games
Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
Thema
naïve
cursed
disclosure
consumer protection
labeling
competition

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Ispano, Alessandro
Schwardmann, Peter
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(wo)
Munich
(wann)
2018

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Ispano, Alessandro
  • Schwardmann, Peter
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Entstanden

  • 2018

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