The objective of this paper is to understand the drivers of consumer choice under risk. We disentangle and study the relative importance of di erent preferences in explaining the high risk premia consumers pay for actuarially unfair insurance. Empirical and behavioral research on insurance is at odds on whether diminishing returns (curvature of the utility function), or loss aversion and non-li...

The conventional wisdom in economic theory holds that switching costs make markets less competitive. This paper challenges this claim. We formulate an empirically realistic model of dynamic price competition that allows for differentiated products and imperfect lock-in. We calibrate this model with data from frequently purchased packaged goods markets. These data are ideal in the sense that the...

In 1996 the Boskin report (1996) discussed several types of measurement errors in the consumer price index (CPI). The CPI measures the cost of purchasing a ...xed market basket of goods and services. All the goods and services in this basket can be divided over classi...cation levels beginning with major groups like food and beverages, housing, transportation, etc. The CPI calculates the monthl...

I today’s multibrand, multichannel marketplace, optimal channel design involves issues such as distribution intensity, channel exclusivity, vertical and horizontal coordination, and online–offline mixed structures. We investigate how a firm’s choice in these design issues affects its profitability under varying levels of brand and outlet differentiation. Our spatial model explicitly captures he...

Older adults constitute a rapidly growing demographic segment, but relatively little is known about them within consumer contexts: how they process information, respond to persuasive messages, and make decisions. We discuss extant findings from consumer behavior and related disciplines (e.g., cognitive psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, gerontology) as they pertain to the effects of a...

Online consumers must burrow through vast piles of product information to find the best match to their preferences. This has boosted the popularity of recommendation agents promising to decrease consumers' search costs. Most recent work has focused on refining methods to find the best products for a consumer. The question of how many of these products the consumer actually wants to see, however...