This paper analyzes optimal product lines when consumers differ both in their taste for, quality and in their desire for social image. The market outcome features partial pooling and, product differentiation that is not driven by heterogeneous valuations for quality but by image, concerns. A typical monopoly outcome is a two-tier product line resembling a “masstige”, strategy as observed in luxury ...
This paper analyses financial literacy and financial behavior of middle class people living an urban Asian economy. Other than most papers on financial literacy that focus on people in developed countries, we surveyed people living Bangkok. Using standard financial literacy questions, we find that financial literacy levels are largely comparable to industrialized countries, but understanding of more ...
BAMS is a joint seminar by the DIW Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance, the HU Berlin and the WZB.
This paper experimentally investigates how concerns for social approval relate to intrinsic motivations to purchase ethically. Participants state their willingness-to-pay for both a fair trade and a conventional chocolate bar in private or publicly. A standard model of social image predicts that all participants increase their fair trade premium when facing an audience. We find that the premium is ...
Whether pro-social preferences identified in economic laboratories survive in natural market contexts is an important and contested issue. We investigate how fairness in a laboratory experiment framed explicitly as a market exchange relates to preferences for fair trade products before and after the market experiment. We find that the willingness to buy at a higher price when higher wages are paid ...
We study a game in which two firms compete in quality to serve a market consisting of consumers with different initial consideration sets. If both firms invest below a certain quality threshold, they only compete for those consumers already aware of their existence. Above this threshold, a firm is visible to all and the highest quality attracts all consumers. In equilibrium, firms do not choose their ...