Price discrimination and business-cycle risk

Marco Cornia, Kristopher Gerardi and Adam Shapiro

No 2011-03, FRB Atlanta Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Abstract: A parsimonious theoretical model of second degree price discrimination suggests that the business cycle will affect the degree to which firms are able to price-discriminate between different consumer types. We analyze price dispersion in the airline industry to assess how price discrimination can expose airlines to aggregate-demand fluctuations. Performing a panel analysis on seventeen years of data covering two business cycles, we find that price dispersion is highly procyclical. Estimates show that a rise in the output gap of 1 percentage point is associated with a 1.9 percent increase in the interquartile range of the price distribution in a market. These results suggest that markups move procyclically in the airline industry, such that during booms in the cycle, firms can significantly raise the markup charged to those with a high willingness to pay. The analysis suggests that this impact on firms' ability to price-discriminate results in additional profit risk, over and above the risk that comes from variations in cost.

Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-mac, nep-mic and nep-mkt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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