I am an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Economics at the Corvinus University of Budapest. My research interests lie in the field of applied microeconomic theory, with a particular focus on questions related to behavioral and information economics. While most of my work is theoretical, I also use empirical methods, drawing on experiments and field data. I received my PhD from the University of Vienna.
Here are links to my CV, my Google Scholar, and my Linkedin profile.
Research Interests:
Microeconomics
Industrial Organization
Information Economics
Behavioral Economics
Working Papers:
Online reviews affect consumer choices and are therefore frequently faked. Not all consumers are aware of this. In a model with fake reviews and naive consumers, the unique equilibrium is characterised by partial pooling, where fake reviews are persuasive and blend in with real ones. Raising consumer awareness has opposing effects on the naive and aware consumer groups. If real reviews are written strategically, they are not always truthful. Under favourable market conditions, the equilibrium with all strategic reviewers is outcome equivalent to one with all aware consumers. Thus, awareness campaigns can yield similar outcomes, regardless of their target audience.
Misinformation in consumer markets - like fake reviews or biased endorsements - poses a challenge for consumers that can be conceptualized as a two-step problem. First, they need to form a belief about the probability that the information is biased. Second, they need to update their beliefs conditional on receiving information. Understanding how these two channels contribute to suboptimal decisions has direct implications for consumer protection policies. This paper reports on an experiment that disentangles both channels utilizing a novel approach which relies neither on theoretical predictions nor on belief elicitation. We find that inability to correctly compute posterior probabilities drives suboptimal decisions and that this effect is heterogeneous across gender.
Work in Progress:
A sender has private information about the marginal cost of a monopolist. Under which conditions is informative communication possible? How much information is optimal with respect to social welfare?
Excess demand today boosts demand tomorrow. What is the optimal policy of a monopolist who can set price and quantity?
This study examines the impact of an imperfectly enforced rent control policy in the Viennese rental market. First, we provide a simple model of an imperfectly enforced price control in a market where some consumers are unaware of the policy and show that such a policy can lead to an increased market price. Using data from rental listings in Vienna to estimate the effect of the rent caps on market rents. The identification strategy is based on spatial and temporal variations in rent caps.
