Product Safety: Liability, R&D, and Signaling

Andrew Daughety and Jennifer Reinganum ()

American Economic Review, 1995, vol. 85, issue 5, 1187-1206

Abstract: The authors develop a monopoly model of product design and safety signaling incorporating a parametric liability specification. The firm first engages in R&D to affect the safety of its product. Since the outcome of R&D trials is unobservable to consumers, the firm then chooses its price, understanding that consumers may draw inferences from the price about the product's safety. Consumers acquire and use the product; injuries lead to losses which are allocated by the liability system. The authors vary the liability system's allocation of losses and trace out the implications for R&D investment and the price-safety relationship. Copyright 1995 by American Economic Association.

Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (117)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%2819951 ... O%3B2-E&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:85:y:1995:i:5:p:1187-1206

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().