 Consumer Inattention and Bill-Shock RegulationNo 828, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Abstract: For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next unit. I develop a model of inattentive consumption, derive equilibrium pricing when consumers are inattentive, and evaluate bill-shock regulation requiring firms to disclose information that substitutes for attention. When inattentive consumers are heterogeneous and unbiased, bill-shock regulation reduces social welfare in fairly-competitive markets, which may be the effect of the FCC's recent bill-shock agreement. If inattentive consumers underestimate their demand, however, then bill-shock regulation can lower market prices and protect consumers from exploitation. Hence the Federal Reserve's new opt-in rule for debit-card overdraft protection may substantially benefit consumers. Keywords: inattention; bill shock; consumer protection; bias; cellular; overdraft (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published, Review of Economic Studies, 2015, 82:1, 219-257 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boc:bocoec:828 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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