Foreign Counterfeiting of Status Goods
研究消费者明知是仿冒品仍愿购买时，仿冒品对正品消费者、品牌商竞争及社会福利的影响，并分析打击仿冒的执法与关税政策。
We study the positive and normative effects of counterfeiting, i.e., trademark infringement, in markets where consumers are not deceived by forgeries. Consumers are willing to pay more for counterfeits than for generic merchandise of similar quality because they value the prestige associated with brand-name trademarks. Counterfeiters of status goods impose a negative externality on consumers of genuine items, as fakes degrade the status associated with a given label. But counterfeits allow consumers to unbundle the status and quality attributes of the brand-name products, and alter the competition among oligopolistic trademark owners. We analyze two policies designed to combat counterfeiting: enforcement policy which increases the likelihood of confiscation of illegal items, and the imposition of a tariff on low-quality imports.