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SSRN Electronic Journal
Article . 2020 . Peer-reviewed
Data sources: Crossref
SSRN Electronic Journal
Article . 2020 . Peer-reviewed
Data sources: Crossref
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Consumer Vulnerability and Behavioral Biases

Authors: Hanming Fang; Zenan Wu;

Consumer Vulnerability and Behavioral Biases

Abstract

A wealth of evidence shows that individuals are biased and firms can often exploit consumers' behavioral biases in their contract designs. In this paper, we study how vulnerable biased individuals are to their own behavioral biases in market equilibrium, and focus on the role of risk aversion and intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES). We measure consumer vulnerability by the percentage loss in a consumer's equilibrium certainty equivalent from a market with non-biased consumers to that with biased ones. We examine several important behavioral biases that have been extensively studied in the literature, including the impact of biased beliefs (either over- or under-confidence) in an insurance market, the impact of present bias and naivete about present bias in a dynamic model of credit contract design, the impact of projection bias about habit formation, and the impact of expectation-based loss aversion on an investor's portfolio choice. We show that consumer vulnerability to all four commonly studied behavioral biases has a non-monotonic relationship with risk aversion or IES. This is in striking contrast to the deviations in the equilibrium allocations from the rational benchmark, which are often monotonic to the risk aversion or IES. We also consider a setting of biased agents with Epstein-Zin preferences to isolate the effect of risk aversion from that of IES. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
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bronze