Topic Consumers

Private Monopoly and Restricted Entry - Evidence from the Notary Profession

Sponsored Search: How Platforms Exacerbate Product Market Concentration

How does online advertising affect consumer behaviour, product pricing and competition? To analyse this, I develop a theory of digital markets where an intermediary provides a platform for firms to advertise their product and where consumers need to engage in costly search if they want to learn about the product characteristics. First, I show that when prices are observable...

Household responses to export prices - Evidence from an oil exporting country

The Role of Physician-Patient Similarity in Diagnosis and Treatment Decisions: Evidence from Antibiotic Prescribing

Physicians in primary care provide initial diagnosis and treatment for a diverse set of patients. However, whereas patients are demographically and socio-economically heterogeneous, physicians typically come from affluent and highly-educated backgrounds. As a result, there is often a mismatch between physicians and the community they serve. I investigate the role of patient-physician similarity...

GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps

Using data on 4.1 million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019, we document that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps; and in the quarters following implementation, entry of new apps fell by half. We estimate a structural model of demand and entry in the app market. Comparing long-run equilibria with and without GDPR, we find that GDPR reduces consumer surplus and...

7th BCCP Forum

Leibniz ScienceCampusBerlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) Forum The Forum will bring together all BCCP fellows in law and economics who are engaged in the activities of the science campus. We will have the opportunity to learn about each other’s research during short presentations by the different partner institutions followed by open discussion. The objective of the meeting is to encourage...

The Effect of Social Comparison on Debt Taking: Experimental Evidence

A number of studies show that there is a link between social comparison and high levels of household debt. However, the exact mechanisms behind this link are not yet well understood. In this paper, we disentangle two mechanisms by performing a lab experiment designed to study the effects of social image concerns and peer information on consumption choices financed through debt taking. We find that ...

Mobile Money, Financial Inclusion, and Unmet Opportunities: Evidence from Uganda

Mobile money is an important instrument to improve the degree of financial inclusion, especially in developing countries. However, having a mobile money account does not imply that this account is actually used. In our sample, 86% of microentrepreneurs own a mobile money account, but only 49% actively use it – the resulting gap indicates unmet opportunities. We estimate that mobile money reaches up ...

Where is the Consumer Center? A Case of St. Petersburg

In an urban economy, the distribution of people and real estate prices depends on the location of the central business district of a city. As distance from the city center increases, both prices and population density diminish, for travel costs increase in terms of time and money. As manufacturing gradually leaves the cities, the importance of consumer amenities as attractors of population to the urban ...

Financial Education is Effective and Efficient