Does Greater Amount of Information Always Bolster Attitudinal Resistance?

Previous research suggests that attitudinal resistance to information that challenges a prior evaluation increases with the amount of information underlying the prior evaluation. We revisit this proposition in a context in which a set of important claims about a target brand are presented either alone—a lower amount of isolated information—or along with other favorable, but less important claims—a higher amount of embedded information. Results from two experiments show that when the challenge occurs immediately after the initial evaluation, a greater amount of embedded initial information does produce greater attitudinal resistance. However, when the challenge occurs after a delay, a lesser amount of isolated information produces greater attitudinal resistance. The findings qualify previous assumptions about the role of prior information in attitudinal resistance, and support a constructive view of judgment revision and attitudinal resistance.     

Banking scope and financial innovation

We explore the implications of financial system design for financialinnovation. We begin with assumptions about the investment opportunitiesof firms, their observable attributes, and the roles of commercialbanks, investment banks, and the financial market. We examinethe borrower's choice between bank and financial market funding,the commercial bank's choice of monitoring capacity, and theinvestment bank's choice of whether to invest in financial innovation.Our main result is that financial innovation in a universalbanking system is stochastically lower than innovation in afinancial system in which commercial and investment banks arefunctionally separated.     

Litigation risk, intermediation, and the underpricing of initial public offerings

We formally examine the role of litigation risk in initial publicoffering (IPO) pricing. The underwriter's pricing decision tradesoff current revenue against expected future litigation costs,both of which are increasing in the IPO price. Given a time-consistencyconstraint and rational expectations on the part of investors,however, the 'standard' litigation risk argument does not leadto equilibrium underpricing. We develop a richer model thatprovides sufficient conditions under which there is equilibriumunderpricing. The issuer's choice of employing an underwriterversus floating the IPO on its own is examined, and varioustestable implications of the model are developed.     

The effect of physical possession on preference for product warranty

Peck and Shu (2009) found that touching a product causes greater endowment effect. We seek to replicate and extend this finding to the case that whether touching a product consumers have just bought may increase the willingness to pay (WTP) for warranty. Loss aversion, the tendency to prefer avoiding losses over obtaining equivalent monetary gains, often explains product warranty purchases. This tendency will be stronger when the buyers consider the product as part of their endowment. Touching the product promotes stronger ownership perception and thus shifts consumer's reference point. The new reference point causes consumers to anticipate greater pain from the loss of the product and thus leads to higher WTP for product warranty protection. We find support for this hypothesis in two field studies with a total of 104 participants.     

Consumer Control and Empowerment: A Primer

This paper introduces consumer empowerment as a promising research area. Going beyond lay wisdom that more control is always better, we outline several hypotheses concerning (a) the factors that influence the perception of empowerment, and (b) the consequences of greater control and the subjective experience of empowerment on consumer satisfaction and confidence.     

Financial system architecture

This article builds a theory of financial system architecture.We ask: what is a financial market, what is a bank, and whatdetermines the economic role of each? Starting with basic assumptionsabout primitives-the types of agents and the nature of informationalasymmetries-we provide a theory that explains which agents coalesceto form banks and which trade in the capital market. It is shownthat borrowers of higher observable qualities access the financialmarket. Moreover, a financial system in its infancy will bebank-dominated, and increased financial market sophisticationdiminishes bank lending.     

Vehicle ownership and usage charges

We present a simple model to study the welfare effects of a shift from ownership to usage taxes for cars. We consider a model in which a single representative consumer derives utility from consuming two goods—consumption of motor vehicle kilometers, and an aggregate consumption good treated as numeraire. We characterize the optimal consumption of car kilometers by a representative car user and find that a shift from ownership towards usage taxes is not necessarily welfare-improving: while a revenue-neutral shift makes the representative car user worse off; a utility-neutral shift leads to a significant loss of revenue to the government. An empirical analysis based on Singapore data is also consistent with our theoretical results.     

The Piecemeal Approach to Comparative Advertising

When attempting to portray the attractiveness of a brand vis-à-vis its competitors, an ad may make global claims about superiority or specific claims about one or more attributes. A special case of latter is the piecemeal ad in which the advertised brand is compared to a competitor on one attribute, a different competitor on a second attribute, another competitor on a third attribute, and so on. The present research demonstrates the effectiveness of this technique and explores the parameters of its influence. We find that piecemeal messages are persuasive because they make seemingly strong claims in a believable manner. Consumer skepticism appears to arise only when conditions for scrutiny are very favorable.     

Competitive equilibrium with type convergence in an asymmetrically informed market

This article studies an asymmetric information game with 'typeconvergence', in which, under some realizations of a commonuncertainty, inducing informed agents to reveal their typesthrough self-selection by contract choice is either costly orimpossible. Under other realizations, self-selection permitscostless distinctions between informed agents. I obtain sufficientconditions under which contracting with options prior to therealization of the common uncertainty leads to the existenceof a perfectly separating, costless Nash equilibrium. Applicationsto variable rate loan commitments and life insurance contractingare discussed.