This paper studies how national sentiment in the form of either a perception or a loyalty bias of bettors may affect pricing patterns on national wagering markets for international sport events. We show theoretically that both biases can be profitably exploited by bookmakers by way of price...

This paper uses individual level data to analyze the effect of changes in the compulsory benefit package of the German statutory health insurance scheme on the demand for private supplementary insurance. In particular, we aim at measuring the effect of excluding dentures from the benefit package...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new...

Focusing on individual motorists in car-owning households in Germany, this paper econometrically investigates the determinants of automobile travel with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and person-level attributes on travel conducted over a five-day week and weekend....

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany’s sixteen federal states. We exploit this variation in the timing of state bans to identify the effect...

The labor force participation rate of women and men is converging in industrialized countries, but disparities nevertheless remain with respect to unpaid activities. Shopping for household maintenance, in particular, is a time-consuming, out-ofhome activity that continues to be undertaken...

The current study examines individual decision making in the fi eld of personal finance. How do people arrive at a financial decision? A laboratory experiment investigates the way external information is integrated into the decision making process. The objective is to explore the link between...

In this study, the relation between consumer credit and real economic activity during the Great Moderation is studied in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Our model economy is populated by two different household types. Investors, who hold the economy’s capital stock, own the...

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to analyze the impact of different types of information on consumption and savings behavior. Based on a buffer stock savings model, three treatment dimensions are used: The amount of information subjects receive about the likelihood of income shocks,...