We examine whether shrouding surcharges or partitioning prices raises demand in online shopping where consumers have very low costs of cancelling an initiated purchase process. In a field experiment with more than 34,000 consumers, we find that consumers in the online shop of a large German...

We provide evidence in line with the illusion of moral superiority, a phenomenon that individuals perceive themselves to be more morally motivated than others. We analyze survey data collected during the 2022/23 energy crisis in Germany to investigate individuals' and others' motivations to...

Whether people seek or avoid risks on gambling, insurance, asset, or labor markets crucially depends on the skewness of the underlying probability distribution. In fact, people typically seek positively skewed risks and avoid negatively skewed risks. We show that salience theory of choice under...

We provide a novel intuition for the observation that many brand manufacturers have restricted their retailers' ability to resell brand products online. Our approach builds on models of salience according to which price disparities across distribution channels guide a consumer’s attention...

While many puzzles in static choices under risk can be explained by a preference for positive and an aversion toward negative skewness, little is known about the implications of such skewness preferences for decision making in dynamic problems. Indeed, skewness preferences might play an even...

In many markets supply contracts include a series of small, regular payments made by consumers and a single, large bonus that consumers receive at some point during the contractual period. But, if for instance its production costs exceed its value to consumers, such a bonus creates...

We analyze oligopolistic third-degree price discrimination relative to uniform pricing when markets are always covered. Pricing equilibria are critically determined by supply-side features such as the number of firms and their marginal cost differences. It follows that each firm's Lerner index...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem in an inquisitorial competition policy system. The antitrust agency’s incentives to produce evidence on the efficiency of a merger proposal depend critically on its action set. Allowing for a compromising remedy solution...

Many intertemporal trade-offs are unbalanced: while the advantages of options are concentrated in a few periods, the disadvantages are dispersed over numerous periods. We provide novel experimental evidence for "concentration bias", the tendency to overweight advantages that are concentrated in...

To help German households and firms with exploding energy costs, the German government is about to implement a new transfer scheme called "gas price brake." A unique feature of this energy price relief measure is that both households and the industry receive a transfer that increases in one's...