Current research

Assessing the effectiveness of remedies in consumer markets

Consumers play a key role in activating competition and making markets work well. However, the role that consumers play is sometimes limited by their lack of information about products, their substitutes and complements, an inability to process the available information effectively and 'bounded' rationality. In addition, a number of identified behavioural 'biases' may mean that consumers may take different views on matters such as risk and time preference from the standard economic model. 

The aim of this research is to summarise existing economic theory and empirical evidence underlying consumer remedies. The aim is to raise the OFT’s level of understanding of the issues, identify implications for policy, identify gaps in our knowledge and propose ways of filling these gaps.

This contract has been awarded to the ESRC Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia. 

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