We run in-store blind taste tests with a retailer's private label food brands and the leading national brand counterparts in three large CPG categories. In a survey administered during the taste test, subjects self-report very high expectations about the quality of the private labels relative to...

We study the long-run evolution of brand preferences, using new data on consumers' life histories and purchases of consumer packaged goods. Variation in where consumers have lived in the past allows us to isolate the causal effect of past experiences on current purchases, holding constant...

We estimate the effect of information and expertise on consumers' willingness to pay for national brands in physically homogeneous product categories. In a detailed case study of headache remedies we find that more informed or expert consumers are less likely to pay extra to buy national brands,...

Brands and brand capital have long been theorized to play an important role in the formation of the industrial market structure of consumer goods industries. We summarize several striking empirical regularities in the concentration, magnitude and persistence of brand market shares in consumer...

How high can public debt rise without compromising fiscal solvency? We answer this question using a stochastic ability-to-pay model of sovereign default in which risk-neutral investors lend to a government that displays "fiscal fatigue," because its ability to increase primary balances cannot...