Kumulative Dissertation, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2019

This dissertation analyzes economic implications of limited attention. The dissertation consists of an introduction (Chapter 1) and four independent articles (Chapter 2-5). The different articles, from the field of microeconomic theory, focus on different aspects of limited attention.
The articles in Chapters 2,3, and 4 are competition models that analyze how limited attention affects equilibria and welfare. In particular, Chapter 2 analyzes the competition between two firms for consumers who only notice quality differences between goods if the absolute quality difference exceeds a perception threshold. Chapter 3 focuses on the competition between two horizontally differentiated firms for consumers with imperfect perception of quality differences. Chapter 4 (joint work with Marc Saur and Markus Schlatterer) investigates the competition between firms for consumers who only notice goods that are similar to their preferred version of the good.
In contrast, the article in chapter 5 is a decision-theoretic model. The article investigates the rational attention allocation of a single decision-maker and discusses the optimal attention allocation.