Kerschbamer Rudolf, Sutter Matthias, Dulleck Uwe
University of Innsbruck.
University of Cologne and University of Innsbruck.
Econ J (London). 2017 Mar;127(600):393-416. doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12284. Epub 2016 Feb 23.
Credence goods markets suffer from inefficiencies caused by superior information of sellers about the surplus-maximising quality. While standard theory predicts that equal mark-up prices solve the credence goods problem if customers can verify the quality received, experimental evidence indicates the opposite. We identify a lack of robustness with respect to heterogeneity in social preferences as a possible cause of this and conduct new experiments that allow for parsimonious identification of sellers' social preference types. Our results confirm the assumed heterogeneity in social preferences and provide strong support for our explanation of the failure of verifiability to increase efficiency.
信任品市场存在效率低下的问题，这是由卖家在实现盈余最大化的质量方面拥有更多信息所导致的。虽然标准理论预测，如果消费者能够核实所获得的质量，统一加价定价就能解决信任品问题，但实验证据却表明事实恰恰相反。我们发现社会偏好异质性缺乏稳健性可能是造成这种情况的一个原因，并开展了新的实验，以便能够简洁地识别卖家的社会偏好类型。我们的结果证实了所假设的社会偏好异质性，并为我们关于可核实性未能提高效率的解释提供了有力支持。
