The COVID-19 pandemic has shown once again that it is often the poor who suffer from economic downturn in times of crisis. As was the case in the financial crisis of 2008, we now have an opportunity to rethink the role of consumer credit in society and design and create a legal framework that...

Consumers' inflation expectations play a key role in the monetary transmission mechanism. As such, it is crucial for monetary policymakers to understand what they are and how they are formed. In this paper we introduce the (un)certainty channel as means to shed light on some of the more puzzling...

Die steile Entwicklung der Gaspreise hat die Strompreise im vergangenen Jahr in bislang ungeahnte Höhen klettern lassen. Satte Zusatzgewinne gemacht haben die Betreiber von Anlagen für erneuerbare Energien - und zwar indirekt auf Kosten der VerbraucherInnen, die kräftig draufzahlen mussten....

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown once again that it is often the poor who suffer from economic downturn in times of crisis. As was the case in the financial crisis of 2008, we now have an opportunity to rethink the role of consumer credit in society and design and create a legal framework that...

Can monetary policy stimulate consumption through inflation expectations? We study how US consumers revise inflation expectations and planned consumption in response to monetary policy shocks using VAR models, where we identify exogenous policy shocks with interest rate surprises around FOMC...

We examine the formation of inflation expectations of US consumers, capturing the impact of their other macroeconomic expectations and self-assessments regarding risk aversion and health. Our results suggest that expectations regarding various macroeconomic variables, e.g., expected developments...

Die Inflationsrate hat im Euroraum zuletzt einen Höchstwert erreicht. Neben der amtlich gemessenen Inflationsrate wurde die subjektive Inflationswahrnehmung hingegen wenig beachtet. Dieser Beitrag füllt diese Lücke, indem auf Grundlage einer repräsentativen Befragung die subjektive...

Der Sachverständigenrat für Verbraucherfragen hat erstmals ein breit angelegtes Gutachten zur Lage der Verbraucher:innen in Deutschland vorgelegt. Gert G. Wagner, Mitglied im Sachverständigenrat für Verbraucherfragen, stellt aus seiner persönlichen Sicht ausgewählte Analysen, Ergebnisse...

This paper analyzes pricing decisions and competition in network markets, assuming that groups of consumers can coordinate their choices when it is in their interest, if coordination does not require communication. It is shown that multiple asymmetric networks can coexist in equilibrium. A...

Inflation expectations constitute a subject of particular contemporary interest to central banks, especially those pursuing a monetary policy based on a strategy of direct inflation targeting. Macroeconomic theory indicates that the transmission of monetary policy impulses bears a close...

We study the effects of consumer information on equlibrium market prices and observable product quality in the market for child care. Child care markets offer a unique opportunity to study these effects because of the existence of resource and referral agencies (R&Rs) in some markets. R&Rs...

Neoclassical theory postulates that preferences between two goods are independent of the consumer's current entitlements. Several experimental studies have recently provided strong evidence that this basic independence assumption, which is used in most theoretical and applied economic models to...

Consumers solve many agency problems, by pointing out when they believe that agents have made mistakes. This paper considers the role that consumers play in inducing efficient behavior by agents. I distinguish between two case: those where consumers have similar preferences to the principal, and...

In the context of emission trading it seems to be taken as given that people's preferences can be ignored with respect to the whole process of fixing emission targets and allocating emission permits to polluters. With this paper we want to reopen the debate on how citizens can be involved in...

By carefully matching the datasets from the Michigan Survey of Consumers with the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the propensity of U.S. households to learn from experts in forming inflation expectations. Additional results for a group...

This paper axiomatizes an index of consumer freedom of choice and applies it to U.S. consumer data from 2004 to 2017. The Renyi entropy arises naturally as an index of the residual of welfare that remains after accounting for total consumption, the price level, and inequality. We show that this...

In this paper, we exploit new sources of cross-sectional data to estimate a detailed product-level demand system for new passenger vehicles. We use four data sources: on the characteristics of products, on the attributes of the U.S. population of households, on the match between the first and...

Several recent surveys ask for a person's subjective probabilities that the in ation rate falls into various outcome ranges. We provide a new measure of the uncertainty implicit in such probabilities. The measure has several advantages over existing methods: It is robust, trivial to implement,...

Several recent surveys ask for a person's subjective probabilities that the inflation rate falls into various outcome ranges. We provide a new measure of the uncertainty implicit in such probabilities. The measure has several advantages over existing methods: It is robust, trivial to implement,...

Consumer search is not only costly but also tiring. We characterize the intertemporal effects that search fatigue has on monopoly and oligopoly prices, the product lines offered by firms, and the provision of consumer assistance (i.e., advice). These effects vary based on whether search is...

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 50 basis points on March 3, 2020, in response to concerns about the coronavirus (COVID-19). On March 5 and 6, I conducted an online survey of over 500 U.S. consumers that asked about their attention to, concerns about, and responses to the coronavirus,...

Several recent surveys ask for a person's subjective probabilities that the inflation rate falls into various outcome ranges. We provide a new measure of the uncertainty implicit in such probabilities. The measure has several advantages over existing methods: It is robust, trivial to implement,...

Several recent surveys ask for a person's subjective probabilities that the in ation rate falls into various outcome ranges. We provide a new measure of the uncertainty implicit in such probabilities. The measure has several advantages over existing methods: It is robust, trivial to implement,...

Introduction -- Pitch Basics -- The Hollywood Pitch -- Persuasion: At the Heart of Decision-Making -- Persuasion Boot Camp -- Persuasion: Personological Variables -- The Roots of Pitch Panic -- The Pitch Panic Cycle -- Dealing with Pitch Panic Emotionally -- Changing Your Thoughts -- Doing Your...

"The production, acquisition, and use of consumer goods defines our daily lives, and yet consumerism is seen as increasingly controversial. Movements for sustainable and ethical consumerism are gaining momentum alongside an awareness of how our choices in the marketplace can affect public...

« L’année 2021 a marqué les 50 ans de l’entrée en vigueur, au Québec, de la Loi sur la protection du consommateur. Cet ouvrage présente un bilan du mouvement consumériste au Québec, traite des enjeux qui caractérisent le rapport de pouvoir entre organisations et consommateurs et...