This paper proposes a tractable New Keynesian (NK) economy with endogenous adjustment in product quality that nests the canonical framework. Endogenous quality choice reduces the slope of the traditional NK Phillips curve and ampliffes the economy's response to productivity shocks. This leads to...

We analyze firms’ incentives to disclose deficiencies of their goods when consumers lack information. We distinguish two types of information: First, only some consumers are aware of the existence of deficiencies, which reduce the quality of the goods. Second, only some consumers have the...

This paper analyses the effect of rising competition from Chinese exports on the skill premium of Mexican plants. Using detailed product-plant-level production data from Mexico and bilateral product-level trade data for 1994-2007, we provide evidence that Mexican plants reduce their skill...

I analyze the implication of consumers' limited attention to quality differences on market outcomes and welfare. I model this limited attention to quality differences with a perception threshold: Consumers only perceive quality differences between goods that exceed the consumers' perception...

A durable good monopolist faces a continuum of heterogeneous customers who make purchase decisions by comparing present and expected price-quality offers. The monopolist designs a sequence of price-quality menus to segment the market. We consider the Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) of a game...

A monopolist producing vertically differentiated durable goods can offer in each period a sequence of price-quality menus to segment the market. We show that, contrary to the Coase conjecture for the homogeneous durable good monopoly, thanks to the ability to produce differentiated durable...

Wine quality perception involves both intrinsic and extrinsic attributes and is related to consumer liking and acceptability of a product. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the actual role of the region of origin cue on the experienced, expected, and perceived quality of wine, as...

This paper investigates the link between product quality and price setting for central processing units (CPUs). Using thousands of price quotes from a popular price-comparison website, we find that market fundamentals, such as the number of sellers, median price, share of convenient prices and...

This paper explores how social interactions among consumers shape markets. In a two-country model, consumers meet and exchange information about the quality of the goods. As information spreads, the demands evolve, affecting the prices and quantities manufactured by profit-maximizing firms. We...

This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from 1998-2005 to generate a "taste distance" measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate consumer taste using a control function approach and...

Innovative technology significantly transforms numerous activities and operations in the logistics sector across various industries, including the aviation sphere. This primary quantitative research aimed to explore the evolution of logistics and supply chain management in the digital age for...

O'donoghue and Zweimüller (2004, J. of Econ. Growth), a seminal work, showed that broadening leading breadth in patent protection can stimulate innovation. However, the empirical literature has consistently found skeptical results on the positive effect. To fill the gap, we build another...

This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from 1998-2005 to generate a "taste distance" measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate consumer taste using a control function approach and...

How much does quality adjustment matter in measuring consumer price inflation? To address this question, we use different sources of micro and macro price data for Germany and the euro area. For Germany, we find that quality adjustment applies to a large range of goods and services but, on...

In an economy where consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences over the hedonic and environmental attributes of goods on sale, we explore the effects of anti-consumerism and environmentalism. We show that when the environmental attributes of products come at the expense of the hedonic...

The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the worldwide biggest live media events and the world’s leading broadcast of an international music competition. The countries of the European Broadcasting Union participate by sending an artist (or a group of artists) to the contest and both expert juries...

Our study proposes a novel mechanism to reduce information asymmetry about product quality between buyers and sellers. Product testing organizations like Consumer Reports (US) and Stiftung Warentest (Germany) seek to reduce this asymmetry by providing credible information. However, limited...

We analyze firms' incentives to disclose deficiencies of their goods when consumers lack information. We distinguish two types of information: First, only some consumers are aware of the existence of deficiencies, which reduce the quality of the goods. Second, only some consumers have the...

This paper analyses the effect of rising competition from Chinese exports on the skill premium of Mexican plants. Using detailed product-plant-level production data from Mexico and bilateral product-level trade data for 1994-2007, we provide evidence that Mexican plants reduce their skill...

This paper proposes a tractable New Keynesian (NK) economy with endogenous adjustment in product quality that nests the canonical framework. Endogenous quality choice reduces the slope of the traditional NK Phillips curve and ampliffes the economy's response to productivity shocks. This leads to...

I analyze the implication of consumers' limited attention to quality differences on market outcomes and welfare. I model this limited attention to quality differences with a perception threshold: Consumers only perceive quality differences between goods that exceed the consumers' perception...

Background: Global spending on health was continuing to rise over the past 20 years. To reduce the growth rates, alleviate information asymmetry, and improve the efciency of healthcare markets, global health systems have initiated price and quality transparency tools in the hospital industry in...

This policy brief highlights the key messages for policy makers from the World Bank report "Seeing the Invisible: A Strategic Report on Groundwater Quality" (Ravenscroft and Lytton 2022a). This report and "A Practical Manual on Groundwater Quality Monitoring" (Ravenscroft and Lytton 2022b)...

We study how competition between physicians affects the provision of medical care. In our theoretical model physicians are faced with a heterogeneous patient population, in which patients systematically vary with regard to both, their responsiveness to the provided quality of care and their...