WiE Brown Bag Seminar - October

Join us for our next session of the WiE Brown Bag Seminar, featuring Lana Lebo, a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck and a teaching and research assistant at the University of Zagreb. She is presenting joint work with Anita Gantner and Rudolf Kerschbamer.

The Role of Information and Identity in Credence Goods Markets: A Natural Field Experiment

Abstract: 

Credence goods markets are characterized by information asymmetries between experts and consumers, which can lead to inefficient outcomes such as overtreatment, undertreatment, and overcharging. Building on experimental evidence from dental care showing that patients with higher socioeconomic status (SES) receive less overtreatment, we use a natural field experiment in Croatia to isolate the mechanisms underlying this effect by experimentally separating the information and shared-identity channels. A test patient who did not require treatment for a wisdom tooth visited 163 dentists under three randomized conditions: uninformed, signaling information through the use…