IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/esohwp/_060.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Markup for Lemons: Quality and Uncertainty in American and British Used-Car Markets c.1953-1973

Author

Listed:
  • Avner Offer

Abstract

Automobile depreciation rates and dealer markups in the United States and Britain during the 1950s and 1960s provide evidence on the effect of asymmetric information on market structures. Initial depreciation was not exceptional, and trade was not disabled. `Lemon` effects were evident in some periods but not others. Depreciation and markups increased with mechanical and styling uncertainty. Adverse selection kicked in as cars aged: high selling costs caused dealers to withdraw from trading older cars. Despite their lower quality, British makes depreciated less, probably due to different novelty signals and longer styling cycles.

Suggested Citation

  • Avner Offer, 2005. "The Markup for Lemons: Quality and Uncertainty in American and British Used-Car Markets c.1953-1973," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _060, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_060
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/history/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David W. Harless & George E. Hoffer, 2002. "Do Women Pay More for New Vehicles? Evidence from Transaction Price Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 270-279, March.
    2. Emons, Winand & Sheldon, George, 2002. "The Market for Used Cars: A New Test of the Lemons Model," Discussion Paper Series 26353, Hamburg Institute of International Economics.
    3. Robert H. Porter & Peter Sattler, 1999. "Patterns of Trade in the Market for Used Durables: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 7149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Devavrat Purohit, 1992. "Exploring the Relationship Between the Markets for New and Used Durable Goods: The Case of Automobiles," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 154-167.
    5. Alessandro Lizzeri & Igal Hendel, 1999. "Adverse Selection in Durable Goods Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1097-1115, December.
    6. W. M. Shaw, Jr., 1986. "On the foundation of evaluation," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 37(5), pages 346-348, September.
    7. 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.
    8. Pashigian, B Peter & Bowen, Brian & Gould, Eric, 1995. "Fashion, Styling, and the Within-Season Decline in Automobile Prices," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 281-309, October.
    9. Kim, Jae-Cheol, 1985. "The Market for "Lemons" Reconsidered: A Model of the Used Car Market with Asymmetric Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 836-843, September.
    10. Frank C. Wykoff, 1973. "A User Cost Approach to New Automobile Purchases," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 40(3), pages 377-390.
    11. Coase, Ronald H, 1972. "Durability and Monopoly," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 143-149, April.
    12. 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.
    13. Franklin M. Fisher & Zvi Griliches & Carl Kaysen, 1962. "The Costs of Automobile Model Changes since 1949," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(5), pages 433-433.
    14. 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.
    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. K. Vela Velupillai, 2017. "The magic market and the Nobel turn: a review article," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 34(3), pages 565-585, December.

    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. Avner Offer, 2005. "The Markup for Lemons: Quality and Uncertainty in American and British Used-Car Markets, c. 1953-1973," Oxford University Economic and Social History Series _060, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    2. Michael Waldman, 2003. "Durable Goods Theory for Real World Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 131-154, Winter.
    3. Robert H. Porter & Peter Sattler, 1999. "Patterns of Trade in the Market for Used Durables: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 7149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. 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.
    5. Kumar, Praveen, 2002. "Price and quality discrimination in durable goods monopoly with resale trading," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(9), pages 1313-1339, November.
    6. Justin P. Johnson & Michael Waldman, 2010. "Leasing, Lemons, and Moral Hazard," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 307-328, May.
    7. Alessandro Lizzeri & Igal Hendel, 1999. "Adverse Selection in Durable Goods Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1097-1115, December.
    8. Peter Kooreman & Marco Haan, 2006. "Price Anomalies in the Used Car Market," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 41-62, March.
    9. Anindya Ghose, 2005. "Used Good Trade Patterns: A Cross-Country Comparison of Electronic Secondary Markets," Working Papers 05-19, NET Institute, revised Oct 2005.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. 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).
    13. Thomas W. Gilligan, 2004. "Lemons and Leases in the Used Business Aircraft Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 1157-1186, October.
    14. Anagol, Santosh, 2017. "Adverse selection in asset markets: Theory and evidence from the Indian market for cows," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 58-72.
    15. Sylvain Prado, 2010. "A Family Hitch: Econometrics of the New and the Used Car Markets," Working Papers hal-04140927, HAL.
    16. Justin P. Johnson & Henry S. Schneider & Michael Waldman, 2014. "The Role and Growth of New-Car Leasing: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(3), pages 665-698.
    17. 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.
    18. Dionne, Georges, 2000. "The Empirical Measure of Information Problems with Emphasis on Insurance Fraud," Working Papers 00-4, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    19. Gary Biglaiser & Fei Li & Charles Murry & Yiyi Zhou, 2020. "Intermediaries and product quality in used car markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(3), pages 905-933, September.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    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:oxf:esohwp:_060. 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: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.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.