Search Results
Working Paper
The effects of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry: a panel analysis
This paper analyzes the effects of market structure on price dispersion in the airline industry, using panel data from 1993 through 2006. The results found in this paper contrast with those of Borenstein and Rose (1994), who found that price dispersion increases with competition. We find that competition has a negative effect on price dispersion, in line with the textbook treatment of price discrimination. Specifically, the effects of competition on price dispersion are most significant on routes that we identify as having consumers characterized by relatively heterogeneous elasticities of ...
Working Paper
Credit Misallocation and Macro Dynamics with Oligopolistic Financial Intermediaries
Bank market power shapes firm investment and financing dynamics and hence affects the transmission of macroeconomic shocks. Motivated by a secular increase in the concentration of the US banking industry, I study bank market power through the lens of a dynamic general equilibrium model with oligopolistic banks and heterogeneous firms. The lack of competition allows banks to price discriminate and charge firm-specific markups in excess of default premia. In turn, the cross-sectional dispersion of markups amplifies the impact of macroeconomic shocks. During a crisis, banks exploit their market ...
Working Paper
Income differences and prices of tradables
This paper presents novel evidence of price discrimination, using prices of identical goods in 28 countries. I explain the observed phenomenon via non-homothetic preferences, in a model of trade with product differentiation and firm productivity heterogeneity. The model brings theory and data closer along a key dimension: it generates positively related prices of tradables and income, while preserving exporter behavior and trade flows of existing frameworks. It further captures observations that richer countries buy more per product and consume more diverse bundles. Quantitatively, the model ...
Working Paper
Competition and price discrimination in the market for mailing lists
This paper examines the relationship between competition and price discrimination in the market for mailing lists. More specifically, we examine whether sellers are more likely to segregate consumers by offering a menu of quality choices (second-degree price discrimination) and/or offering different prices to readily identifiable groups of consumers (third-degree price discrimination) in more competitive markets. We also examine how the fineness with which consumers are divided corresponds to the level of competition in the market. ; The dataset includes information about all consumer ...
Working Paper
Identifying price discrimination when product menus are endogenous
The standard approach to identifying second degree price discrimination is based on examining correlations between product menus and prices. When product menus are endogenous, however, tests for price discrimination may be biased by the fact that unobservables affecting costs or demand may jointly determine product menus and prices leading one to falsely infer price discrimination. Attempts to correct for this potential bias using observed product characteristics or fixed effects are shown to potentially confound inference on price discrimination leading one to reject it when firms are ...
Report
The dynamics of automobile expenditures
This paper presents a dynamic model for light motor vehicles. Consumers solve an optimal stopping problem in deciding if they want a new automobile and when in the model year to purchase it. This dynamic approach allows for determining how the mix of consumers evolves over the model year and for measuring consumers' substitution patterns across products and time. I find that temporal substitution is significant, driving consumers' entry into and exit from the market. Through counterfactuals, I show that because consumers will temporarily substitute to a large degree, failure to account for ...
Discussion Paper
Consumer Scores and Price Discrimination
The consumer suffers because she buys less (with the loss represented by the red area). And while not depicted, she also suffers from future price discrimination due to information about her willingness to pay (that is, the intercept of her demand function) getting transmitted to Firm 2. However, Firm 1 is forced to lower its price (P’ in the figure) after the strategic demand reduction occurs. If the consumer has high willingness to pay, the benefit of this discount applied to many units is such that she wants to be tracked (the blue area—a benefit—grows as the intercept of demand ...