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Full-Text Articles in Economics
Why The Rich Drink More But Smoke Less: The Impact Of Wealth On Health Behaviors, Hans Van Kippersluis, Titus Galama
Why The Rich Drink More But Smoke Less: The Impact Of Wealth On Health Behaviors, Hans Van Kippersluis, Titus Galama
Titus Galama
Wealthier individuals engage in healthier behavior. This paper seeks to explain this phenomenon by developing a theory of health behavior, and exploiting both lottery winnings and inheritances to test the theory. We distinguish between the direct monetary cost and the indirect health cost (value of health lost) of unhealthy consumption. The health cost increases with wealth and the degree of unhealthiness, leading wealthier individuals to consume more healthy and moderately unhealthy, but fewer severely unhealthy goods. The empirical evidence presented suggests that differences in health costs may indeed provide an explanation for behavioral differences, and ultimately health outcomes, between wealth …
Demonstrations And Price Competition In New Product Release, Raphael Boleslavsky, Christopher Cotton, Haresh Gurnani
Demonstrations And Price Competition In New Product Release, Raphael Boleslavsky, Christopher Cotton, Haresh Gurnani
Raphael Boleslavsky
We develop a game theoretic model of price competition in which an innovating firm can offer product demonstrations. Placing minimal restriction on the firm's ability to design demonstrations, we show that the equilibrium demonstration resolves some but not all customer valuation uncertainty and allows the innovating firm to attract customers while maintaining a high price. Consumer surplus may be lower with endogenous demonstrations than without demonstrations. Regulation requiring firms to provide fully-informative demonstrations (e.g., generous return policies or inspection periods) can further reduce consumer surplus. The ability to design demonstrations also creates incentives for innovating firms to limit the market …
Selloffs, Bailouts, And Feedback: Can Asset Markets Inform Policy?, Raphael Boleslavsky, David L. Kelly, Curtis R. Taylor
Selloffs, Bailouts, And Feedback: Can Asset Markets Inform Policy?, Raphael Boleslavsky, David L. Kelly, Curtis R. Taylor
Raphael Boleslavsky
We present a model in which a policymaker observes trade in a financial asset before deciding whether to intervene in the economy, for example by offering a bailout or monetary stimulus. Because an intervention erodes the value of private information, informed investors are reluctant to take short positions and selloffs are, therefore, less likely and less informative. The policymaker faces a tradeoff between eliciting information from the asset market and using the information so obtained. In general she can elicit more information if she commits to intervene only infrequently. She thus may benefit from imperfections in the intervention process or …