Draft:Rudolf Kerschbamer

Kerschbamer earned his master degree in economics (Magister rer.soc.oec.) at the University of Vienna in 1985 followed by a Ph.D in economics (Doktor rer.soc.oec.) and a Habilitation in economics at the same institution in 1994 and in 2000. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Vienna in 1985 and later he became an Associate Professor at the same institution. In 2002 he was appointed as a Full Professor in Economics at the University of Innsbruck. Between 1996 and 1998 he spent several longer research visits at the MEDS Department of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University in Chicago (USA) and between 2008 and 2013 several longer research visits at the School of Economics of the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane (AUS).^[1]

Kerschbamer’s work spans industrial organization, behavioral and experimental economics, with particular emphasis on markets characterized by asymmetric information and strategic interaction. A central theme in his research is the economics of credence goods – goods or services where experts know more about the needs of their customers than the customers themselves.^[3] Examples include medical care,^[4] vehicle^[5] and computer repairs,^[6] and taxi rides in unknown cities.^[5]

In an important paper, Kerschbamer (jointly with a coauthor) introduced a parsimonious model of credence goods that integrates and consolidates many of the main results previously established in the literature.^[7] This model has since been widely utilized for studying markets for credence goods.^[8]

In addition to his theoretical contributions, Kerschbamer has empirically explored information asymmetry in credence goods markets, focusing on the detectability of undertreatment, overtreatment, and overcharging, and research on social preferences influencing expert behavior.^[9] He also wrote a seminal experimental article on credence goods ‘’The Economics of Credence Goods: An Experiment on the Role of Liability, Verifiability, Reputation and Competition’’ published in American Economic Review in 2011.^[10] In addition, he conducted (jointly with some coauthors) the first field experiment on the determinants of cheating in taxi rides. The authors examined how taxi drivers exploit their information advantage over passengers and showed that the taxi driver’s overcharging and the extent of detours depend on a passenger’s presumed familiarity with the city and the tariff system.^[11]

Beyond his work on the economics of credence goods, another focus of his research is the modeling of distributional preferences and other forms of non-selfish attitudes,^[12] their identification in the laboratory, and their effects on the economic behavior of agents.^[13] In this domain he developed a systematic approach (the Equality Equivalence Test or EET) that enables the identification of distributional preference types on the individual level.^[14] The proposed procedure has since been stress-tested^[15] and employed by researchers in scientific papers.^[16] An example is the study “Social Preferences and Political Attitudes: An Online Experiment on a Large Heterogeneous Sample” (published in the Journal of Public Economics). The authors measured the social preferences of a large representative sample of the German population using data from the German Internet Panel (GIP). They related these preferences to individuals’ responses to survey questions about political attitudes and redistribution. Their results show that, compared to selfish individuals, inequality-averse and altruistic individuals exhibit a higher propensity to vote for left-wing parties, self-identify as more left-leaning, and express stronger support for redistribution.^[14]

• Dulleck, U., Kerschbamer, R. (2006), On Doctors, Mechanics and Computer Specialists – The Economics of Credence Goods, Journal of Economic Literature 44: 5–42.
• Dulleck, U., Kerschbamer, R., Sutter, M. (2011), The Economics of Credence Goods: An Experiment on the Role of Liability, Verifiability, Reputation and Competition, American Economic Review 101: 526–555.
• Balafoutas, L., Beck, A., Kerschbamer, R., Sutter, M. (2013), What Drives Taxi Drivers? A Field Experiment on Fraud in a Market for Credence Goods, Review of Economic Studies 80: 876–891.
• Beck, A., Kerschbamer, R., Qiu, J., Sutter, M. (2013), Shaping Beliefs in Experimental Markets for Expert Services: Guilt Aversion and the Impact of Promises and Money-Burning Options, Games and Economic Behaviour 81: 145–164.
• Kerschbamer, R. (2015), The Geometry of Distributional Preferences and a Non-Parametric Identification Approach: The Equality Equivalence Test, European Economic Review 76: 85–103.
• Cox, J., Kerschbamer, R., Neururer, D. (2016), What is Trustworthiness and What Drives It?, Games and Economic Behavior 98: 197–218.
• Kerschbamer, R., Neururer, D., Sutter, M. (2016), Insurance Coverage of Customers Induces Dishonesty of Sellers in Markets for Credence Goods, PNAS – Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 113: 7454–7458.
• Balafoutas, L., Kerschbamer, R., Sutter, M. (2017), Second-Degree Moral Hazard in a Real-World Credence Goods Market, Economic Journal 127: 1–18.
• Kerschbamer, R., Sutter, M., Dulleck, U. (2017), How Social Preferences Shape Incentives on (Experimental) Markets for Credence Goods, Economic Journal 127: 393–416.
• Kerschbamer, R., Mueller, D. (2020), Social Preferences and Political Attitudes: An Online Experiment on a Large Heterogeneous Sample, Journal of Public Economics 182: 104076.
• Hedegaard, M., Kerschbamer, R., Mueller, D., Tyran, J.-R. (2021), Distributional Preferences Explain Behavior across Games and Time, Games and Economic Behavior 128: 231–255.
• Huber, J., Inoua, S., Kerschbamer, R., König genannt Kersting, Ch., Palan, St., Smith, V. (2022), Nobel and Novice: Author Prominence Affects Peer Review, PNAS – Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 119 (41): 1–7.
• Kerschbamer, R., Neururer, D., Sutter, M. (2023), Credence goods markets, online information and repair prices: A natural field experiment, Journal of Public Economics 222: 104891.
• Hall, J., Kerschbamer, R., Neururer, D., Skoog, E. (2025), Uncovering Sophisticated Discrimination with the Help of Credence Goods Markups – Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment, Management Science 71 (1): 694–707.