Description
- Abstract:
- This dissertation explores topics in the fields of industrial organization and public economics. The first chapter investigates the role of pre-purchase information in the market of experience goods, specifically in the context of online wine retail. We study how sellers influence the perceived quality of these goods by strategically censoring information. We create a unique dataset of expert ratings combining an independent source and a major online retailer. Our results document that the seller is likely to censor the lowest scores. To understand if consumers are in turn affected, we design and implement on online stated choice experiment, combined with an information treatment. We estimate the impact of expert scores on consumers' demand, and test whether consumers aware of censorship. Our results show that consumers care about expert ratings, and wines with higher scores are more likely to be selected than wines with lower. Our information treatment did not stimulate a change in consumers behavior. We propose three alternative explanations: that consumers are naive, meaning that they always act as if they observe ratings from a complete source, alternatively, that consumers are sophisticated and are not surprised to learn about the seller's behavior, finally that participants to the experiment did not read or understand our information treatments, or that they did not care about it. In the second chapter I study the political and economics determinants of local budget formation, more specifically the role played by traffic fines. Using data from Italian municipalities, I provide evidence of a revenue and an electoral motive for municipal governments to impose traffic tickets. I exploit an exceptional fiscal consolidation that happened in Italy, where the government reduced transfers to municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, but not to those below. A regression discontinuity shows that affected municipalities reacted by increasing revenues from traffic fines, to cover roughly 10 percent of their budget reduction. Interestingly, we do not observe any beneficial effect on road accidents. Using variation across municipalities in election timing, I provide evidence that traffic is enforced less strictly in electoral years, inducing an increase in road accidents and injured people.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2022
Citation
Cerasa, Igor,
"Essays on Industrial Organization and Public Economics"
(2022).
Economics Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:33rmj8p3/
