Research

Publications

This article how consumers' habit formation and addiction affect firms' pricing policies. I consider both sophisticated consumers, who realize that their current consumption will affect future tastes, and naive consumers, who do not. The main result is that the optimal pricing pattern when the consumer is naive is a ``bargain then rip-off'' contract, i.e. a fixed fee, with the first units priced below cost, and then pricing above marginal cost. This holds both under symmetric and asymmetric information about the consumers' sophistication. It has significant welfare implications since addictive goods can be exploitative and pay more than she expects ex-ante when she signed the contract. Banning this kind of contract when the good is addictive is welfare improving. On the other hand, the mainly habit-forming consumer cannot be exploited, and she is better off by remaining naive and buying a ``bargain then rip-off'' contract.


Watch a video summarizing the main results.  Media Coverage: OT Greece, Public.

This study explores the long-run effects of a temporary scarcity of consumption goods on individuals’ preferences towards that good when the shock is over. We focus on people who spent their childhood during World War II and exploit the temporary fall in meat availability that they experienced early in life. We combine hand-collected historical data on the number of livestock at the regional level with microdata on eating habits and meat consumption. By exploiting cohort and regional variation in a difference-in-differences estimation, we show that individuals who, as children were more exposed to meat scarcity tend to consume more meat during late adulthood. Consistently with medical studies on the side effects of meat overconsumption, we find that these individuals also have a higher probability of being overweight and suffering from cardiovascular disease. The effects are larger for women and persist intergenerationally as the adult children of mothers who have experienced meat scarcity also tend to over-consume meat. Our results point towards a behavioral channel from early-life shocks into adult health and eating habits that we illustrate through a theoretical model of reference dependence and taste formation. 


Working Papers & Work in progress 


This study examines how early-life exposure to food scarcity influences individuals' long-term time preferences and savings behavior. To this end, we analyze hand-collected historical data on livestock availability during World War II at the province level, alongside detailed survey data on elicited time preferences and household savings. By leveraging differences across cohorts and provinces in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that individuals who experienced more severe scarcity during childhood develop higher levels of patience later in life and tend to hold more (precautionary) savings, conditional on income. Our findings suggest that exposure to protein scarcity during the first years of life and in utero can instigate a lasting increase in prudent behavior in the form of a coping mechanism.

Presentations: 39th meeting of EEA 2024 (scheduled), 2nd Diversity and Human Capital Workshop: Well-being,  Erasmus School of Economics (Department of Finance), CRC TR 224 Family & Gender Economics Workshop,  CF Research Seminar (Mannheim Business School), Public Economics Seminar (University of Mannheim), CRC TR 224 Retreat in Offenbach



This paper examines the impact of a quality upgrade on the adoption rate of new technologies, exploiting the staggered transition from 3G to 4G in mobile internet usage in Greece. We use individual monthly mobile consumption data from a major Greek Internet Service Provider (ISP) spanning from 2011 to 2013.  Our results show that introducing 4G leads to a significant increase in mobile internet consumption, both among existing users and in attracting new users. This innovation accelerates the diffusion of mobile internet usage, particularly in areas with more technologically savvy consumers. Consumers start responding to the quality shock with a few months' delay, and mobile internet usage increases gradually, suggesting a learning process. Furthermore, adoption rates are heterogeneous across the population and are driven by young men, who increase their use more than women and consumers aged over 45.

Presentations:  51st Annual Conference of EARIE 2024 (scheduled), MaCCI Annual Conference 2024, University of East Anglia, Erasmus School of Economics (Internal Seminar).