This article shows that it may be socially optimal to grant accident victims less than full compensation. In our framework, firms are liable under product liability but also invest in care to prevent consumers switching to competitors. Affecting the partition of consumers by means of care-taking...

This article shows that it may be socially optimal to grant accident victims less than full compensation. In our framework, firms are liable under product liability but also invest in care to prevent consumers switching to competitors. Affecting the partition of consumers by means of care-taking...

Consumers increasingly care about firms’ ethical conduct (e.g., labor and environmental practices) when making their consumption choices. This note presents a simple framework to highlight the possibility that this development may induce a less desirable production technology choice and bring...

This paper shows that the provision of consumer rights can decrease welfare when some consumers remain ignorant of these rights. We find that consumers uninformed about a mandated warranty demand excessively safe products in some circumstances. In other circumstances, uninformed consumers buy...

Rules of consumer protection or fair competition can be publicly or privately enforced. We consider the possibility of false advertising by a firm in duopolistic competition where consumers can be distinguished according to whether or not they form rational beliefs about the trustworthiness of...

Rules of consumer protection or fair competition can be publicly or privately enforced. We consider the possibility of false advertising by a firm in duopolistic competition where consumers can be distinguished according to whether or not they form rational beliefs about the trustworthiness of...

This paper analyzes liability rules when consumers and third parties/the environment incur harm. Expected harm is convex in the level of output and modeled as a power function. We show that the social ranking of liability rules previously established for the case in which only consumers suffer...

This paper shows that households with positional concerns and convex status utility use gambling to attempt leapfrogging in the social hierarchy. We test this theoretical prediction relying on household data that is representative for Germany, proxying the status orientation of households by...