The decision to introduce a national FuelWatch scheme provides a timely case study of `evidence-based- policy' making in Australia. The government based its decision on econometric work by the ACCC who refuse to release the data. They claim that their analysis is robust because it has been...

Experience from the United Kingdom and the United States suggests that expert evidence is often reshaped and repackaged by governments so that it supports existing policy rather than informing policy decisions. The Australian government based its decision to introduce FuelWatch on evidence in...

EU has to attain the strategic objectives for 2020: 20% of energy from renewable sources, cutting the emissions of greenhouse gases by 20% and diminishing the dependence on imported fuels, that is why in the last years European Commission has decided that MS should increase the flexibility of...

This paper sheds new light on the asymmetric dynamics in upstream U.S. gasoline prices. The model is based on Pindyck's inventory model of commodity price dynamics. We show that asymmetry in gasoline price dynamics is caused by changes in the net marginal convenience yield: higher costs of...

The subject concerning the protection of the consumers’ rights and interests is of high concern nowadays, because the market economy, by its mechanisms and by the principles it promotes is permanently associated with the notion of correctness. Considering the consumer’s needs, the notion of...

This paper studies sales techniques which discourage consumer search by making it harder or more expensive to return to buy after a search for alternatives. It is unilaterally profitable for a seller to deter search under mild conditions, but sellers can suffer when all do so. When a seller...

There is growing evidence that low-quality customer service prevails in the mobile telecommunications industry. In this paper we provide theoretical support to this empirical observation by using simple game theoretical models where inefficient low-quality service levels are part of an...

We run a market experiment where subjects take the role of firms and can choose not only their price but also whether to present comparable offers. Firms are faced with artificial demand whereby consumers make mistakes in assessing the net value of products on the market. Some of those consumers...

This paper surveys models of markets in which some consumers are "savvy" while others are not.  We discuss when the presence of savvy consumers improves the deals available to non-savvy consumers in the market (the case of search externalities), and when the non-savvy fund generous deals for...

We run a market experiment where firms can choose not only their price but also whether to present comparable offers. They are faced with artificial demand from consumers who make mistakes when assessing the net value of products on the market. If some offers are comparable however, some...