Tomb price discrimination in cemeteries: competition in the market for corpses?

Francisco Marcos Fernandez and Juan Santaló ()
Additional contact information
Juan Santaló: Instituto de Empresa
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Juan Santalo

Working Papers Economia from Instituto de Empresa, Area of Economic Environment

Abstract: We study empirically the determinants of public tomb prices in a sample of Spanish towns. We document strong evidence in favor that cemeteries act as local monopolies that use second degree price discrimination to maximize profits. Additionally we report that local cemetery prices react to competition from private cremation companies. This competition is associated with lower price dispersion caused by an increase in the minimum niche prices with no effect on other higher niche prices. We conclude that cemeteries have accommodated and facilitated entry of private cremation companies through an increase in those niche prices more likely to affect cremation demand.

Keywords: Administrative law; Non-market regulation; Public prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2007-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-reg
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://latienda.ie.edu/working_papers_economia/WP07-09.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:emp:wpaper:wp07-09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers Economia from Instituto de Empresa, Area of Economic Environment Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amada Marcos ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).