Le résumé en français n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur. / This paper studies firms’ disclosure decisions of product information in a duopoly setting, as well as the welfare implication of compulsory disclosure policy. I show that there is a problem of externality between the two firms: even if disclosure weakens price competition in the market and increases total industry profits, a firm could have incentive not to disclose product information because it decreases his market share. As a result, regulatory policy could increase total industry profits as it could rectify the problem of externality. Therefore, despite more information allows consumers to make a better choice between different alternatives, it might backfire as it could increase the average price in the market. I also present simple conditions on when providing more information could harm consumers, and when it will improve consumer welfare. This paper studies the information processing behavior of a decision maker (DM) who has limited information processing ability. More specifically, the DM can process only a subset of all available information. Before taking an action, he chooses whether to process or ignore signals about the state of the world which he receives sequentially. I show that at the optimum, the DM processes only signals which are strong enough, but will process a weaker signal if it confirms his existing strong belief or if it supports a much more desirable state of the world. This explains some phenomena which have been well documented in the psychology literature, such as preference for strong signals, confirmation bias for individuals with strong prior and wishful thinking. Moreover, I analyze how the Internet, and in general changes in information structures, affects the processing behavior of the DM. The results shed light on different issues in the information era, including polarization and media strategy. This paper studies experimentally whether confirmation bias arises when individuals are exposed to information overload, or equivalently have limited ability to perfectly update their belief with all available information. In our experiment, subjects have to form beliefs as they navigate a sequence of signals within a limited period of time. We compare belief formation under two settings, where the treatment setting imposes a larger information/cognitive load than the control setting. We find that subjects in the treatment setting exhibit a stronger confirmation bias than those in the control setting. Upon receiving a belief-challenging signal, subjects in the treatment group update their belief less than those in the control group. In contrast, upon receiving a belief-confirming signal, subjects update similarly in both settings. As a result, subjects in the treatment setting are also less likely to switch sides: once they believe that one state is more probable than another, they are less likely to switch even if they receive enough belief-challenging signals. Not only do these results show that the limited ability of information processing plays a role in the formation of confirmation bias, they also improve our understanding on the impact of information overload, for example on polarization.

This paper investigates the role of credit market sentiments and investor beliefs on credit cycle dynamics and their propagation to business cycle fluctuations. Using US data from 1968 to 2019, we show that credit market sentiments are indeed able to detect asymmetries in a small-scale macroeconomic model. By exploiting recent developments in behavioral finance on expectation formation in financial markets, we are able to identify an unexpected credit market news shock exhibiting different impacts in an optimistic and pessimistic credit market environment. While an unexpected movement in the optimistic regime leads to a rather low to muted impact on output and credit, we find a significant and persistent negative impact on those variables in the pessimistic regime. Therefore, this article departs from the current literature on the role of financial frictions for explaining business cycle behavior in macroeconomics and argues in line with recent theoretical contributions on the relevance of expectation formation and beliefs as source of cyclicity and instability in financial markets. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Research in consumer behavior has focused predominantly on how consumers make purchase decisions. However, much less attention has been directed toward examining post-purchase behaviors. In this dissertation, I examine how ownership affects individuals' disposal decisions of their current possessions. In essay 1, I investigate how differences in duration of ownership affect consumers' food waste behaviors. I demonstrate that the same food products are more likely to be wasted as well as wasted more of when they are owned for a longer duration (vs. purchased more recently). I also delineate how this wastage can be reduced. In essay 2, I explore how a specific post-ownership experience, evaluations (positive vs. negative), influences consumers' recycling behaviors, even when these evaluations (e.g., taste of a drink) do not affect recyclability (e.g., of the bottle). I demonstrate that consumers will be more likely to recycle products associated with positive (vs. negative) evaluations, and, thus, will be more likely to recycle a drink's bottle when the taste is evaluated more positively. / Doctor of Philosophy / When thinking about the field of consumer behavior, most might believe it to involve studying how consumers evaluate products and make purchase decisions. Very few might believe that studying post-purchase behaviors also falls within the realm of consumer behavior. Unfortunately, these beliefs are quite common, and are not held by lay people alone. In fact, in the past, even researchers thought of consumer research as being synonymous with buyer behavior. However, researchers now recognize that consumer behavior is a dynamic ongoing process, which does not just start and end with product purchase. In this dissertation, I focus on one type of consumers' post-purchase behavior, disposal decisions. Specifically, I look at how ownership affects individuals' disposal decisions of their current possessions. In essay 1, I focus on consumers' food waste behavior. I study how differences in how long they have owned a food product (duration-of-ownership) affect their food evaluations as well as food waste behavior. I find that even when two food products are otherwise identical (i.e., same manufacturing/expiration dates, not expired, previously unopened), consumers are more likely to waste as well as waste more of the one purchased earlier (a longer duration-of-ownership) than that purchased more recently (a shorter duration-of-ownership). I also suggest one strategy to help reduce this food wastage. In essay 2, I focus on consumers' recycling behavior. I study how product evaluations affect consumers' recycling decisions. I find that even when these evaluations (e.g., taste of a drink) have nothing to do with the container (e.g., bottle of the drink), consumers are more likely to recycle the drink's bottle when they like the taste than when they do not like the taste of the drink.

Language plays an indispensable role in the transmission, maintenance, and formation of culturally shared beliefs. Yet beliefs about groups, in particular, are shared despite the existence of prohibitive norms that act to inhibit their expression. This apparent incongruity suggests that cultural beliefs become shared through linguistic means other than explicit expression. In support of this, the linguistic bias paradigm proposes that linguistic bias is the implicit and unintentional expression of beliefs through the differential use of linguistic abstraction (Franco & Maass, 1996; Maass, 1999; Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989), as defined by the Linguistic Category Model (Semin & Fiedler, 1988). According to this paradigm, linguistic bias not only reveals the speakers’ privately held beliefs but also transmits these beliefs to recipients, leading to belief sharedness. The consequences of exposure to linguistic bias, however, have yet to be shown and this is the aim of the present research program. The first study focuses on belief transmission, by determining if there is a direct causal effect from linguistic abstraction to individual impression formation. Results show that biased language transmits information about individuals but the communication context, specifically whom the message is about, is also important. Given this, it is likely that the content of the message will also affect the reception of biased language. The second study thus focuses on belief maintenance, by considering the relative effects of different levels of linguistic abstraction on pre-existing beliefs. Results were inconclusive, but may have been affected by methodological limitations. The third study addresses these limitations while focusing on belief formation, by measuring the impact of biased language in the absence of pre-existing beliefs. Recipients, in general, formed beliefs that corresponded to the biased language to which they were exposed. Together, these studies suggest that linguistic bias plays a role in belief sharedness as a mechanism through which cultural beliefs are transmitted and formed. Linguistic bias, however, must be understood within the specific communication context, which also independently affects reception.