Kenan Kalayci
| Date of PhD defense: | 16 February 2011 |
| Title of thesis: | Essays in Behavioral Industrial Organization |
| ISBN: | 978 90 5668 272 9 |
| Promotor: | Prof.dr. Jan Potters |
Abstract:
This thesis aims to make an empirical contribution to the emerging field of behavioral industrial organization. The main research question is whether bounded rationality on the demand side can be exploited by sellers, resulting in higher prices and lower consumer surplus.
The thesis contains four substantive chapters, each based on an individual paper. Each paper revolves around the common theme of the effects of complexity on decision making in a market setting but addresses a distinct research question.
Chapter 2, focuses on the demand side and shows that buyers make inferior choices when options are more complex and suggests that sellers might have incentives to take advantage of this. Chapter 3 employs a price setting duopoly experiment where sellers can obfuscate buyers by making their products more complex. Chapter 4 reports an experiment that examines the effects of price complexity on market prices, while Chapter 5 examines the effects of increased competition on complexity and prices in the experimental markets of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.
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Global / English