The elegant economic picture of rational consumers achieving Pareto optimality through trade in decentralized self-organized markets is blurred by market imperfections and choices inconsistent with consumer self-interest. Behavioral economics has documented these errors in choice, and considered...

Many everyday activities are habitual. Among the most common human activities is communication. If people primarily communicate in a common-interests environment, they may form habits of truth-telling and believing messages. If they primarily communicate in a conflicting-interests environment,...

We report the results of an experiment to systematically investigate the influence of different settings in credence good markets on opportunism in the sellers' decisions. We find that, as predicted by a cognitive dissonance model, the specific choice of the design features might be less...

The integration process between evolutionary approach and conventional economic analysis is very essential for the next development of economic studies, especially in the fundamental concepts of modern economics: supply and demand analysis. In this presentation, we use the concept of meme to...

Assurance schemes (certifications and labels) are widespread in the agri-food sector. This paper reviews the landscape of existing schemes, and the evidence on whether labels change consumer behaviour, and whether assurance schemes achieve positive change on the farm. The impact of existing...

Although consumers often care about environmental quality, limited attention impairs consumers' perception of environmental quality. Environmental awards and labels make environmental quality salient and attract consumers' attention. We analyze how awards and labels affect firms' investments in...

This paper tests the broadly adopted assumption that people apply a single discount rate to the utility from different sources of consumption. Using unique data from two surveys conducted in rural Uganda including both hypothetical and real choices over different goods, the paper elicits time...

Abstract This study presents results of the validation of an ultra-short survey measure of patience included in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Survey responses predict intertemporal choice behavior in incentive-compatible decisions in a representative sample of the German adult population.

We explore the role of memory for choice behavior in unfamiliar environments. Using a unique data set, we document that decision makers exhibit a "memory premium." They tend to choose in-memory alternatives over out-of-memory ones, even when the latter are objectively better. Consistent with...

We explore the interplay between two key individual drivers of green consumption: intrinsic moral concerns for the environment and reputational concerns for social image. Our microeconomic behavioral model characterizes choices among lifestyles differing in environmental impacts (brown/green)...