IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lmu/muenec/12411.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Overconfidence in the Market for Lemons

Author

Listed:
  • Herweg, Fabian
  • Müller, Daniel

Abstract

We extend Akerlof ’s (1970) “Market for Lemons” by assuming that some buyers are overconfident. Buyers in our model receive a noisy signal about the quality of the good that is at display for sale. Overconfident buyers do not update according to Bayes’ rule but take the noisy signal at face value. The main finding is that the presence of overconfident buyers can stabilize the market outcome by preventing total adverse selection. This stabilization, however, comes at a cost: rational buyers are crowded out of the market.

Suggested Citation

  • Herweg, Fabian & Müller, Daniel, 2011. "Overconfidence in the Market for Lemons," Discussion Papers in Economics 12411, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenec:12411
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12411/1/Herweg_Mueller_2011_Overconfidence_in_the_Market_for_Lemons.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Levin, Jonathan, 2001. "Information and the Market for Lemons," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(4), pages 657-666, Winter.
    2. Michael D. Grubb, 2009. "Selling to Overconfident Consumers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1770-1807, December.
    3. Bond, Eric W, 1982. "A Direct Test of the "Lemons" Model: The Market for Used Pickup Trucks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(4), pages 836-840, September.
    4. Ellingsen, Tore, 1997. "Price signals quality: The case of perfectly inelastic demand," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 43-61, November.
    5. de la Rosa, Leonidas Enrique, 2011. "Overconfidence and moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 429-451.
    6. Fang, Hanming & Moscarini, Giuseppe, 2005. "Morale hazard," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 749-777, May.
    7. Florian Englmaier, 2010. "Managerial optimism and investment choice," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(4), pages 303-310.
    8. Michael Rothschild & Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 629-649.
    9. Mark Voorneveld & Jörgen W. Weibull, 2011. "A Scent of Lemon—Seller Meets Buyer with a Noisy Quality Observation," Games, MDPI, vol. 2(1), pages 1-24, March.
    10. Adriani, Fabrizio & Deidda, Luca G., 2009. "Price signaling and the strategic benefits of price rigidities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 335-350, November.
    11. Charles Wilson, 1980. "The Nature of Equilibrium in Markets with Adverse Selection," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 108-130, Spring.
    12. Gregory Lewis, 2011. "Asymmetric Information, Adverse Selection and Online Disclosure: The Case of eBay Motors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1535-1546, June.
    13. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    14. Genesove, David, 1993. "Adverse Selection in the Wholesale Used Car Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 644-665, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jiayu Huang & Yifan Wang & Yaojun Fan & Hexuan Li, 2022. "Gauging the effect of investor overconfidence on trading volume from the perspective of the relationship between lagged stock returns and current trading volume," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 103-123, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ingrid Bauer & Liudmila Zavolokina & Gerhard Schwabe, 2020. "Is there a market for trusted car data?," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 30(2), pages 211-225, June.
    2. Mamada, Robert, 2022. "The market for lemons and information theory," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 107-112.
    3. Jonathan R. Peterson & Henry S. Schneider, 2017. "Beautiful Lemons: Adverse Selection in Durable-Goods Markets with Sorting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(9), pages 3111-3127, September.
    4. Benedikt Notheisen & Jacob Benjamin Cholewa & Arun Prasad Shanmugam, 2017. "Trading Real-World Assets on Blockchain," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 59(6), pages 425-440, December.
    5. Dionne, Georges, 1998. "La mesure empirique des problèmes d’information," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 74(4), pages 585-606, décembre.
    6. Adriani, Fabrizio & Deidda, Luca G., 2009. "Price signaling and the strategic benefits of price rigidities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 335-350, November.
    7. Mérel, Pierre & Ortiz-Bobea, Ariel & Paroissien, Emmanuel, 2021. "How big is the “lemons” problem? Historical evidence from French wines," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    8. Adriani, Fabrizio & Deidda, Luca G., 2011. "Competition and the signaling role of prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 412-425, July.
    9. Bart Wilson & Arthur Zillante, 2010. "More Information, More Ripoffs: Experiments with Public and Private Information in Markets with Asymmetric Information," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 36(1), pages 1-16, February.
    10. K. W. Chau & Lennon H. T. Choy, 2011. "Let the Buyer or Seller Beware: Measuring Lemons in the Housing Market under Different Doctrines of Law Governing Transactions and Information," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 347-365.
    11. Brian Chezum & Bradley S. Wimmer, 2000. "Evidence of Adverse Selection from Thoroughbred Wagering," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 66(3), pages 700-714, January.
    12. Michael Waldman, 2003. "Durable Goods Theory for Real World Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 131-154, Winter.
    13. Dionne, Georges, 2012. "The empirical measure of information problems with emphasis on insurance fraud and dynamic data," Working Papers 12-10, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    14. Strittmatter, Anthony & Lechner, Michael, 2020. "Sorting in the used-car market after the Volkswagen emission scandal," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    15. Tomas Philipson & John Cawley, 1999. "An Empirical Examination of Information Barriers to Trade in Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 827-846, September.
    16. Christopher Adams & Laura Hosken & Peter Newberry, 2011. "Vettes and lemons on eBay," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 109-127, June.
    17. Jonathan R. Peterson & Henry S. Schneider, 2014. "Adverse selection in the used-car market: evidence from purchase and repair patterns in the Consumer Expenditure Survey," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(1), pages 140-154, March.
    18. Wendy Edelberg, 2004. "Testing for adverse selection and moral hazard in consumer loan markets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2004-09, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Heidhues, Paul & Köszegi, Botond, 2018. "Behavioral Industrial Organization," CEPR Discussion Papers 12988, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Silvia Martinez-Gorricho, 2020. "Signalling, Information and Consumer Fraud," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-25, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Adverse Selection; Market for Lemons; Overconfidence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lmu:muenec:12411. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.