Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/169391 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
cege Discussion Papers No. 323
Publisher: 
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege), Göttingen
Abstract: 
Moral hazard in expert diagnoses is more complicated in credence goods markets because ex-post verification of service optimality is usually not possible. We provide an experimental framework to investigate expert and consumer behavior as well as market efficiency in a setting in which experts need to invest in costly but unobservable effort to identify consumer problems and consumers are able to visit multiple experts for diagnosis. We introduce heterogeneously-qualified experts, varying in their necessary effort to diagnose consumers. We examine how subjects react to expert qualification and the introduction of price competition. We find that our baseline market is more efficient and qualification is not necessarily the Sisyphean task, as theory predicted. Nevertheless, we observe high skilled experts investing significantly less effort in diagnoses than their low skilled counterparts. Qualifying experts increases efficiency with fixed prices but remains almost without influence in markets with price competition. Introducing price competition does not lead to the predicted market breakdown, but rather has negative effects on market efficiency. In sum, whether expert qualification should be pursued in credence goods markets depends on the market composition and existing institutions.
Subjects: 
credence goods
expert market
laboratory experiment
expert qualification
second opinions
price competition
JEL: 
D12
D82
C91
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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