IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2008-177.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumer Confusion: The Choice of AFORE

Author

Listed:
  • Moisés J. Schwartz
  • Enrique E. Domínguez
  • Roberto Calderón-Colín

Abstract

This paper was prepared for the World Bank 4th Annual Contractual Savings Conference (Washington DC, April 2008) co-organized by Gregorio Impavido (gimpavido@imf.org). The article shows that account transfers among pension administrators in Mexico barely respond to price or return considerations and in general has not improved the consumer's pension balance. Instead of strengthening competition through lower fees and higher returns for the consumer, AFORE switching has so far undermined the system and resulted in the destruction of value. Moreover, "noisy" evaluations of the product by the consumer tend to undermine the power of competition. Thus, an increased number of pension fund managers has not provided a more competitive environment. The theoretical framework allows for the estimation of "noise" and mark-ups in the AFORE industry. As the number of AFOREs increases, the mark-up diminishes at a very slow rate. This implies that more participants in the industry will hardly affect prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Moisés J. Schwartz & Enrique E. Domínguez & Roberto Calderón-Colín, 2008. "Consumer Confusion: The Choice of AFORE," IMF Working Papers 2008/177, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2008/177
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=22105
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Perloff, Jeffrey M & Salop, Steven, 1984. "Equilibrium with product differentiation," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt4cq0m6s3, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    2. Robert Holzmann & Richard Hinz, 2005. "Old Age Income Support in the 21st century: An International Perspective on Pension Systems and Reform," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7336.
    3. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    4. Nevo, Aviv, 2001. "Measuring Market Power in the Ready-to-Eat Cereal Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(2), pages 307-342, March.
    5. Berry, Steven & Levinsohn, James & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 841-890, July.
    6. Jeffrey M. Perloff & Steven C. Salop, 1985. "Equilibrium with Product Differentiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(1), pages 107-120.
    7. Esther Duflo & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "The Role of Information and Social Interactions in Retirement Plan Decisions: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 815-842.
    8. Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou, 1995. "Product Differentiation and Oligopoly in International Markets: The Case of the U.S. Automobile Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 891-951, July.
    9. Rodrigo Cerda, 2006. "Movilidad en la Cartera de Cotizantes por AFP: La Importancia de ser Primero en Rentabilidad," Documentos de Trabajo 309, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    10. David Laibson & Xavier Gabaix, 2004. "Competition and Consumer Confusion," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 663, Econometric Society.
    11. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson & Hongyi Li, 2005. "Extreme Value Theory and the Effects of Competition on Profits," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000656, UCLA Department of Economics.
    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. Emma Aguila & Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2014. "How Do Management Fees Affect Retirement Wealth Under Mexico’s Personal Retirement Accounts System?," Working Papers WR-1023, RAND Corporation.
    2. Emma Aguila & Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2008. "Pension Reform in Mexico: The Evolution of Pension Fund Management Fees and their Effect on Pension Balances," Working Papers wp196, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.

    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. Carvalho, M., 2009. "Price Recall, Bertrand Paradox and Price Dispersion With Elastic Demand," Discussion Paper 2009-69, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    2. Carvalho, M., 2009. "Price Recall, Bertrand Paradox and Price Dispersion With Elastic Demand," Other publications TiSEM c00b849b-641f-43ed-a493-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Carvalho, M., 2011. "Essays in behavioral microeconomic theory," Other publications TiSEM 97fbb10e-5f12-420b-b8c4-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Anderson, Simon P. & de Palma, Andre, 2000. "From local to global competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 423-448, March.
    5. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Margaret Aksoy-Pierson & Gad Allon & Awi Federgruen, 2013. "Price Competition Under Mixed Multinomial Logit Demand Functions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1817-1835, August.
    7. Steven Berry & Amit Gandhi & Philip Haile, 2013. "Connected Substitutes and Invertibility of Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(5), pages 2087-2111, September.
    8. Richards, Timothy J. & Hamilton, Stephen F. & Patterson, Paul M., 2010. "Spatial Competition and Private Labels," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 35(2), pages 1-26, August.
    9. Carlin, Bruce I., 2009. "Strategic price complexity in retail financial markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 278-287, March.
    10. Brynjolfsson, Erik & Dick, Astrid Andrea & Smith, Michael D., 2004. "Search and Product Differentiation at an Internet Shopbot," Working papers 4441-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    11. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, September.
    12. Erik Brynjolfsson & Astrid Dick & Michael Smith, 2010. "A nearly perfect market?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 1-33, March.
    13. Tovar, Jorge, 2012. "Consumers’ Welfare and Trade Liberalization: Evidence from the Car Industry in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 808-820.
    14. Pereira, Pedro & Ribeiro, Tiago, 2011. "The impact on broadband access to the Internet of the dual ownership of telephone and cable networks," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 283-293, March.
    15. Andrew Rhodes & Jidong Zhou, 2019. "Consumer Search and Retail Market Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2607-2623, June.
    16. George Alessandria & Joseph P. Kaboski, 2011. "Pricing-to-Market and the Failure of Absolute PPP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 91-127, January.
    17. Steven Berry & James Levinsohn & Ariel Pakes, 2004. "Differentiated Products Demand Systems from a Combination of Micro and Macro Data: The New Car Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 68-105, February.
    18. Koichiro Ito & Shuang Zhang, 2020. "Willingness to Pay for Clean Air: Evidence from Air Purifier Markets in China," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(5), pages 1627-1672.
    19. Céline Bonnet & Pierre Dubois, 2010. "Inference on vertical contracts between manufacturers and retailers allowing for nonlinear pricing and resale price maintenance," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(1), pages 139-164, March.
    20. Rebecca Hellerstein & Sofia Berto Villas-Boas, 2006. "Arm's-length transactions as a source of incomplete cross-border transmission: the case of autos," Staff Reports 251, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2008/177. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.