Fixed Costs Matter

Jurjen Kamphorst, Ewa (E.) Mendys-Kamphorst () and Bastian (B.) Westbrock ()
Additional contact information
Ewa (E.) Mendys-Kamphorst: CEG
Bastian (B.) Westbrock: Utrecht University

No 18-095/VII, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: According to standard economic wisdom, fixed costs should not matter for pricing decisions. However, outside economics, it is widely accepted that firms need to increase their prices after a fixed cost rise. In this note, we show that a liquidity-constrained firm that maximizes lifetime profits should increase its price after a fixed cost increase, if future profits depend positively on current sales. The reason is that then the optimal price is lower than the one that maximizes the current profit. Because the higher cost necessitates higher current profits to avoid bankruptcy, the firm needs to increase its price.

Keywords: fixed costs; sunk costs; brand loyalty; switching costs; pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D42 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-com, nep-hme and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/18095.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:tin:wpaper:20180095

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().