Electricity was born at the dawn of the last century. Households were inundated with a ßood of new consumer durables. What was the impact of this consumer durable goods revolution? It is argued here that the consumer goods revolution was conducive to liberating women from the home. To analyze this hypothesis, a Beckerian model of household production is developed. Households must decide whether...

We document a basic characteristic of adverse selection in secondhand markets for durable goods: goods with higher observed quality may have more adverse selection and hence lower unobserved quality. We provide a simple theoretical model to demonstrate this result, which is a consequence of the interaction of sorting over observed quality between drivers with different quality valuations and ad...

Theory suggests the financial decisions of durable goods makers can impose spillovers on their consumers. Namely, the consumption stream that durable goods provide frequently depends on services provided by the manufacturer itself (e.g., warranties, spare parts availability, maintenance and upgrades). Manufacturer bankruptcy, or even the possibility thereof, threatens this service provision and...

The increasing importance of the service offer for manufacturing companies has lead to the development of different service chains and service package in different industries. The main aim of this paper is to provide a structured comparison of the service offer and configuration in the capital goods and durable consumer goods industries. Even though the paper is mainly of a conceptual nature, t...

We investigate whether the perception of economy-wide inflation is affected by the frequency with which various goods' prices are observed. We provide novel experimental evidence that consumers' perceptions of aggregate inflation are systematically biased toward the perceived inflation rates of the frequently purchased items. This ‘frequency bias’ may affect consumers’ consumption and investmen...

We analyze a dynamic version of the Akerlof±Wilson ``lemons'' market in a competitive durable good setting. There is a ®xed set of sellers with private information about the quality of their wares. The price mechanism sorts sellers of different qualities into different time periodsÐprices and average quality of goods traded increase over time. Goods of all qualities are traded in ®nite time. Ma...

Leasing has become an increasingly prominent way for consumers to acquire durable goods such as automobiles. How markets respond to changes in lease contracts has enormous implications to producers such as Ford Motor Company. In this paper, an experimental model was developed to study the interaction between lease contracts that embed an option to purchase and an underlying used-goods market. E...

THE YEAR 1 9 4 0 was characterized by sharp employment increases in industries producing such durable goods as automobiles, aircraft, ships, machinery, and other ferrous metal products, and by an expansion in construction, arising out of the Nation's need for cantonments, shipways, airports, and armament plants. Industries covered by State unemployment compensation laws participated to a greate...