Two Essays on Consumer Choice

Two Essays on Consumer Choice PDF Author: Rishin Roy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Two Essays on Consumer Choice

Two Essays on Consumer Choice PDF Author: Rishin Roy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description


Essays on Consumer Credit Markets

Essays on Consumer Credit Markets PDF Author: Mark William Jenkins
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
This dissertation studies the organization of consumer credit markets using a rich and novel dataset from a large subprime auto lender. Its primary goal is to develop empirical methods for analyzing markets with asymmetric information and to use these methods to better understand the behavior of subprime borrowers and lenders. The first chapter quantifies the importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in the subprime auto loan market and shows how different loan contract terms serve to mitigate these distinct information problems. The second chapter examines the impact of centralized credit scoring on lending outcomes, including the distribution of performance across dealerships within the firm. The third chapter studies borrower repayment behavior and quantifies the impact of ex post moral hazard on interest rates and the costs of default. Collectively, the three chapters provide a better understanding of the functioning of markets for subprime credit in the U.S. They also provide unique empirical evidence on the importance of asymmetric information and the value of screening, monitoring, and contract design in consumer credit markets in general.

Three Essays on Consumers' Preferences for Fresh Organic Produce

Three Essays on Consumers' Preferences for Fresh Organic Produce PDF Author: Yuko Onozaka
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Essays in Public Finance and Industrial Organization

Essays in Public Finance and Industrial Organization PDF Author: Neale Ashok Mahoney
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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This dissertation has four chapters. The first three chapters examine health insurance markets in the U.S., focusing in particular on contexts where there are important interactions between health insurance plans. The fourth chapter is on the U.S. budget, examining the implications of annual budget cycles on the quantity and quality of end-of-year spending. Chapter 1, entitled "Bankruptcy as Implicit Health Insurance" examines the interaction between health insurance and the implicit insurance that people have because they can file (or threaten to file) for bankruptcy. With a simple model that captures key institutional features, I demonstrate that the financial risk from medical shocks is capped by the assets that could be seized in bankruptcy. For households with modest seizable assets, this implicit "bankruptcy insurance" can crowd out conventional health insurance. I test these predictions using variation in the state laws that specify the type and level of assets that can be seized in bankruptcy. Because of the differing laws, people who have the same assets and receive the same medical care face different losses in bankruptcy. Exploiting the variation in seizable assets that is orthogonal to wealth and other household characteristics, I show that households with fewer seizable assets are more likely to be uninsured. This finding is consistent with another: uninsured households with fewer seizable assets end up making lower out-of-pocket medical payments. The estimates suggest that if the laws of the least debtor-friendly state of Delaware were applied nationally, 16.3 percent of the uninsured would buy health insurance. Achieving the same increase in coverage would require a premium subsidy of approximately 44.0 percent. To shed light on puzzles in the literature and examine policy counterfactuals, I calibrate a utility-based, micro-simulation model of insurance choice. Among other things, simulations show that "bankruptcy insurance" explains the low take-up of high-deductible health insurance. Chapter 2, entitled "Pricing and Welfare in Health Plan Choice", is coauthored with M. Kate Bundorf and Jonathan Levin. The starting point for the paper is the simple observation that when insurance premiums do not reflect individual differences in expected costs, consumers may choose plans inefficiently. We study this problem in health insurance markets, a setting in which prices often do not incorporate observable differences in expected costs. We develop a simple model and estimate it using data on small employers. In this setting, the welfare loss compared to the feasible risk-rated benchmark is around 2-11% of coverage costs. Three-quarters of this is due to restrictions on risk-rating employee contributions; the rest is due to inefficient contribution choices. Despite the inefficiency, the benefits from plan choice relative to each of the single-plan options are substantial. Chapter 3, entitled "The Private Coverage and Public Costs: Identifying the Effect of Private Supplemental Insurance on Medicare Spending, " is coauthored with Marika Cabral. While most elderly Americans have health insurance coverage through Medicare, traditional Medicare policies leave individuals exposed to significant financial risk. Private supplemental insurance to "fill the gaps" of Medicare, known as Medigap, is very popular. In this Chapter, we estimate the impact of this supplemental insurance on total medical spending using an instrumental variables strategy that leverages discontinuities in Medigap premiums at state boundaries. Our estimates suggest that Medigap increases medical spending by 57 percent--or about 40 percent more than previous estimates. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that a 20 percent tax on premiums would generate combined revenue and savings of 6.2 percent of baseline costs; a Pigovian tax that fully accounts for the fiscal externality would yield savings of 18.1 percent. Chapter 4, entitled "Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement, " is coauthored with Jeffrey Liebman. Many organizations fund their spending out of a fixed budget that expires at year's end. Faced with uncertainty over future spending demands, these organizations have an incentive to build a buffer stock of funds over the front end of the budget cycle. When demand does not materialize, they then rush to spend these funds on lower quality projects at the end of the year. We test these predictions using data on procurement spending by the U.S. federal government. Using data on all federal contracts from 2004 through 2009, we document that spending spikes in all major federal agencies during the 52nd week of the year as the agencies rush to exhaust expiring budget authority. Spending in the last week of the year is 4.9 times higher than the rest-of-the-year weekly average. We examine the relative quality of year-end spending using a newly available dataset that tracks the quality of $130 billion in information technology (I.T.) projects made by federal agencies. Consistent with the model, average project quality falls at the end of the year. Quality scores in the last week of the year are 2.2 to 5.6 times more likely to be below the central value. To explore the impact of allowing agencies to roll unused spending over into subsequent fiscal years, we study the I.T. contracts of an agency with special authority to roll over unused funding. We show that there is only a small end-of-year I.T. spending spike in this agency and that the one major I.T. contract this agency issued in the 52nd week of the year has a quality rating that is well above average.

Handbook of the Economics of Marketing

Handbook of the Economics of Marketing PDF Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444637656
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 634

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Book Description
Handbook of the Economics of Marketing, Volume One: Marketing and Economics mixes empirical work in industrial organization with quantitative marketing tools, presenting tactics that help researchers tackle problems with a balance of intuition and skepticism. It offers critical perspectives on theoretical work within economics, delivering a comprehensive, critical, up-to-date, and accessible review of the field that has always been missing. This literature summary of research at the intersection of economics and marketing is written by, and for, economists, and the book's authors share a belief in analytical and integrated approaches to marketing, emphasizing data-driven, result-oriented, pragmatic strategies. - Helps academic and non-academic economists understand recent, rapid changes in the economics of marketing - Designed for economists already convinced of the benefits of applying economics tools to marketing - Written for those who wish to become quickly acquainted with the integration of marketing and economics

Structural Analysis of Discrete Data with Econometric Applications

Structural Analysis of Discrete Data with Econometric Applications PDF Author: Charles F. Manski
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
The thirteen papers in "Structural Analysis of Discrete Data" are previously unpublished major research contributions solicited by the editors. They have been specifically prepared to fulfill the two-fold purpose of the volume, first to provide the econometrics student with an overview of the present extent of the subject and to delineate the boundaries of current research, both in terms of methodology and applications. "Coordinated publication of important findings" should, as the editors state, "lower the cost of entry into the field and speed dissemination of recent research into the graduate econometrics classroom."A second purpose of the volume is to communicate results largely reported in the econometrics literature to a wider community of researchers to whom they are directly relevant, including applied econometricians, statisticians in the area of discrete multivariate analysis, specialists in biometrics, psychometrics, and sociometrics, and analysts in various applied fields such as finance, marketing, and transportation.The papers are grouped into four sections: "Statistical Analysis of Discrete Probability Models, " with papers by the editors and by Steven Cosslett; "Dynamic Discrete Probability Models, " consisting of two contributions by James Heckman; "Structural Discrete Probability Models Derived from Theories of Choice, " with papers by Daniel McFadden, Gregory Fischer and Daniel Nagin, Steven Lerman and Charles Manski, and Moshe Ben-Akiva and Thawat Watanatada; and "Simultaneous Systems Models with Discrete Endogenous Variables, " with contributions by Lung-Fei Lee, Jerry Hausman and David Wise, Dale Poirier, Peter Schmidt, and Robert Avery.Among the applications treated are income maintenance experiments, physician behavior, consumer credit, and intra-urban location and transportation.

Using Discrete Choice Experiments to Value Health and Health Care

Using Discrete Choice Experiments to Value Health and Health Care PDF Author: Mandy Ryan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402057539
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This work takes a fresh and contemporary look at the growing interest in the development and application of discrete choice experiments (DCEs) within the field of health economics. The book comprises chapters by highly regarded academics with experience of applying DCEs in the area of health. Thus the book is relevant to post-graduate students and applied researchers with an interest in the use of DCEs for valuing health and health care and has international appeal.

Models in Microeconomic Theory

Models in Microeconomic Theory PDF Author: Martin J. Osborne
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 180511123X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Models in Microeconomic Theory covers basic models in current microeconomic theory. Part I (Chapters 1-7) presents models of an economic agent, discussing abstract models of preferences, choice, and decision making under uncertainty, before turning to models of the consumer, the producer, and monopoly. Part II (Chapters 8-14) introduces the concept of equilibrium, beginning, unconventionally, with the models of the jungle and an economy with indivisible goods, and continuing with models of an exchange economy, equilibrium with rational expectations, and an economy with asymmetric information. Part III (Chapters 15-16) provides an introduction to game theory, covering strategic and extensive games and the concepts of Nash equilibrium and subgame perfect equilibrium. Part IV (Chapters 17-20) gives a taste of the topics of mechanism design, matching, the axiomatic analysis of economic systems, and social choice. The book focuses on the concepts of model and equilibrium. It states models and results precisely, and provides proofs for all results. It uses only elementary mathematics (with almost no calculus), although many of the proofs involve sustained logical arguments. It includes about 150 exercises. With its formal but accessible style, this textbook is designed for undergraduate students of microeconomics at intermediate and advanced levels.

Lectures In The Microeconomics Of Choice: Foundations, Consumers, And Producers

Lectures In The Microeconomics Of Choice: Foundations, Consumers, And Producers PDF Author: William David Anthony Bryant
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811254729
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 779

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Book Description
People pursue their own interests, whatever those interests might be. Some people have interests that are narrow and selfish, while others have interests that are broad and altruistic. The idea that people are self-interested underpins all of economic analysis and raises two fundamental questions: 1. How do people choose the actions they think will further their own interests? 2. Can the potentially conflicting interests of different people be made to 'mesh' in some sort of socio-economic equilibrium? This book is devoted to a detailed study of the first question. Its Companion Volume (Economy-Wide Microeconomics: Equilibrium, Optimality, Applications and Tests) makes a detailed study of the second question.Following some foundational remarks, this book studies the Arrow-Debreu theory of consumer choice. That theory supposes people choose so as to maximize a complete, continuous, transitive, and reflexive binary preference relation over a non-empty and compact choice set. The book then studies numerous refinements, generalizations and extensions of each of these restrictions — up to and including recent work on Behavioral theories of choice and choice behaviour when preferences are intransitive/incomplete/discontinuous. Also considered is choice behaviour in environments that are not necessarily compact. A study is also made of intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty. The study of Arrow-Debreu choice theory and its extensions are presented from the Primal, Dual, and Revealed Preference points of view.Consumers are not the only agents in the economy, as Producers are present as well. Beginning with a study of the Arrow-Debreu idea that producers choose from a convex production set so as to maximize profit, the book considers extensions and generalizations of this framework, particularly to non-convex environments. The study is presented from the Primal and Dual points of view.The final chapter in the book provides a link to its Companion Volume. The Chapter indicates how the theories of consumer and producer choice studied here help inform answers of the second question posed above.Resources are available to instructors who adopt this book. More details at www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12789-sm

Essays on Choice and Matching Under Information Asymmetry

Essays on Choice and Matching Under Information Asymmetry PDF Author: Gregory M. Lewis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description