Topic Consumers

Many People Have Inadequate Understanding of Basic Financial Concepts: Seven Questions to Antonia Grohmann

Life Satisfaction in Germany after Reunification: Additional Insights on the Pattern of Convergence

The authors update previous findings on the total East-West gap in overall life satisfaction and its trend by using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1992 to 2013. Additionally, the East-West gap and its trend are separately analyzed for men and women as well as for four birth cohorts. The results indicate that reported life satisfaction is on average significantly lower ...

Asymmetric Perceptions of the Economy: Media, Firms, Consumers, and Experts

This article sheds light on the interaction of media, economic actors, and economic experts. Based on a unique data set of 86,000 news items rated by professional analysts of Media Tenor International and survey data, we first analyze the overall tone of the media, consumers’, firms’, and economic experts’ opinions on the state and outlook of the economy. Second, we assess the protagonist’s ability ...

The Transmission of Oil and Food Prices to Consumer Prices: Evidence for the MENA Countries

This paper investigates the effects of global oil and food price shocks to consumer prices in Middle East-North African (MENA) countries using threshold cointegration methods. Oil and food price shocks increase domestic prices in the long run, whereby the impact of food prices dominates. While global prices are weakly exogenous, consumer prices respond to deviations from the equilibrium relationship. ...

How Health Plan Enrollees Value Prices Relative to Supplemental Benefits and Service Quality

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary benefit provision on top of federally mandated benefits, and (iii) health plan prices for almost all German health ...

Childhood Roots of Financial Literacy

Financial literacy predicts informed financial decisions, but what explains financial literacy? We use the concept of financial socialization and aim to represent three major agents of financial socialization: family, school and work. Thus we compile twelve relevant childhood characteristics in a new survey study and examine their relation to financial literacy, while controlling for established socio-demographic ...

The Effect of Peer Observation on Consumption Choices: Experimental Evidence

This paper investigates the impact of peer observation on the consumption decisions of rural households in Thailand using a lab-in-the-field experiment. We find that those groups that observe each other show lower within group standard deviation in their decisions. Thus, we find evidence for conformity. Further, we find that individual's consumption choice is influenced by the group choice controlling ...

Childhood Roots of Financial Literacy

Financial literacy predicts informed financial decisions, but what explains financial literacy? We use the concept of financial socialization and aim to represent three major agents of financial socialization: family, school and work. Thus we compile twelve relevant childhood characteristics in a new survey study and examine their relation to financial literacy, while controlling for established socio-demographic ...

The 3rd Berlin IO Day

The Berlin IO Day is a one-day workshop sponsored by Berlin's leading academic institutions, including DIW Berlin, ESMT, WZB, Humboldt University Berlin, and Technical University Berlin which takes place twice a year, in the Fall and in the Spring. The aim is to create an international forum for high quality research in Industrial Organization in the heart of Berlin, one of Europe's most vibrant...

The 2nd Berlin IO Day

The Berlin IO Day is a one-day workshop sponsored by Berlin's leading academic institutions, including DIW Berlin, ESMT, WZB, Humboldt University Berlin, and Technical University Berlin which takes place twice a year, in the Fall and in the Spring. The aim is to create an international forum for high quality research in Industrial Organization in the heart of Berlin, one of Europe's most vibrant...