Shrouded Attributes and the Curse of Educatoin

David Laibson () and Xavier Gabaix ()

No 673, 2004 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: Some consumers fail to observe shrouded product attributes when they buy a new product. For example, an account holder may not know their bank's fee schedule. Firms will choose high shrouded fees and compete to attract consumers with loss-leader base goods: e.g., banks will offer free gifts for opening an account and then snare naive consumers with high fees for bouncing a check. Sophisticated consumers take the free gifts and avoid the shrouded fees. Under weak conditions, firms will not be able to profitably attract consumers by advertising low add-on prices, since sophisticated consumers would rather pool with naive consumers at shrouded firms then switch to transparent firms with low add-on fees and no free gifts. Bertrand competition breaks down and monopoly pricing of the add-on persists even in markets with high levels of competition and costless advertising

Keywords: bounded rationality; behavioral economics; behavioral industrial organization; shrouded attributes; loss leader; myopia; add-on; profit center; complexity; confusion; discrete choice. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D00 D80 L00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed004:673

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2004 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics
Address: Society for Economic Dynamics Anne Stubing CV Starr Center for Applied Economics 269 Mercer Street, Room 303 New York University New York, NY 10003
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().