Talk:Price discrimination/Archives/2016

Creating Gender-Based Price Discrimination Page
I intend to create a subpage on Gender-based Price Discrimination. I also want to edit the Gender-Based Examples section on this page to include a summarization of my article once finished.

Further I would like to make section 6.9 Gender-Based Examples less about examples and more about an analysis of the issues surrounding gender-based price discrimination.

The topic of gender-based pricing discrimination is well documented yet hardly spoken about and I would like to start a conversation about it on Wikipedia. Further, gender-based price discrimination has the potential to impact everyone’s relationship with the economy: Gender-based price discrimination not only adversely affects women, but also men. I’ve heard some recent talk about gender-based price discrimination after Chicago decided to eliminate the tax on tampons, but taxes are a lot different than price altogether and I want to articulate that in this article. Price discrimination can easily go unnoticed, especially when it comes to the basic necessities for which a consumer has no choice but to purchase (razors, deodorant, shampoo). I believe firmly in a transparent market and a well-informed consumer, so the opportunity to document the various studies on gender-based price discrimination would be a welcome opportunity to inform readers and potential consumers.

There is some discussion on the talk page regarding whether or not gender-based price discrimination exists or is justified. I want to include that discussion on my proposed page. I hope to not only discuss female-based price discrimination but also male-based price discrimination. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FPizzo (talk • contribs) 15:51, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

FPizzo (talk) 14:51, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Gender-Based Price Discrimination Subpage
I recently created the subpage I mentioned in my previous post.

Gender-Based Price Discrimination

This is just a starting point. Here is my outline:

[Overview]

1 Gender Disparities in Pricing

1.1 Gender Disparities in Pricing of Personal Care Products

1.2 Gender Disparities in Retail Clothing

1.2.1 Children’s Clothing

1.2.2 Adult Clothing

1.3 Gender Disparities in Health Care Products

1.3.1 Senior Health Care

1.4 Gender Disparities in Car Prices

1.5 Gender Disparities in Services

1.5.1 Hair Salons

1.6 Gender Disparities in Insurance

1.6.1 Health Insurance

1.6.2 Car Insurance

2 Gender Disparities in Discounts

2.1 Ladies’ Night Discounts

2.1.2 New Jersey

3 Gender Disparities in Taxes

3.1 Tampon Tax

4 Consumer Protection Laws

4.1 United States

4.1.1 Federal Reforms

4.1.2 California

4.1.3 New York City

4.1.4 Miami Dade, Florida

FPizzo (talk) 18:07, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Examples of Gender-Based Price Discrimination
This section could be expanded. I see there is some talk about whether gender-based price discrimination even exists. I think perhaps the relevant arguments should be added to discuss this further.

Here is an interesting study regarding gender-based pricing discrimination:

Megan Duesterhaus, et. Al, The Cost of Doing Femininity: Gendered Disparities in Pricing of Personal Care Products and Services, The University of Central Florida, Dec. 2011

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257772245_The_Cost_of_Doing_Femininity_Gendered_Disparities_in_Pricing_of_Personal_Care_Products_and_Services — Preceding unsigned comment added by FPizzo (talk • contribs) 23:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

FPizzo (talk) 14:51, 6 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I Agree the section really needs to be improved. Perhaps it could be renamed? The current section title, Gender-based examples, implies that it simply contains list of discrete examples. A more encompassing section title that excludes the word "examples" might better suit it. StrangrDangr (talk) 09:44, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Chen's comment on this article
Dr. Chen has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Third-degree price discrimination occurs when a firm charges different prices for its product to distinct consumer groups. For a monopoly seller, price discrimination will generally increase profit, but what is its effect on total welfare and consumer welfare compared to uniform pricing? An extensive economics literature, dating to Pigou (1920) and advanced by scholars including Schmalensee (1981), Varian (1985), has found that price discrimination will reduce total welfare if it does not increase total output. More recently, Aguirre, Cowan, and Vickers (2010) and Cowan (2012) have shown how the welfare effects of price discrimination are related to demand curvatures.

Price discrimination can also arise under oligopoly competition (e.g., Holmes, 1989; Stole, 2007). Unlike monopoly price discrimination, oligopoly price discrimination can lead to lower equilibrium profits for all firms (e.g., Chen, 1997; Korts, 1998), because under price discrimination firms can compete for different segments of consumers separately and hence compete more intensively.

Under dynamic competition, firms may charge different prices to different consumers based on their purchase history (Chen, 1997; Villas-Boas, 1999; Fudenberg and Tirole, 2000; Taylor, 2003). Such dynamic price discrimination is increasingly common as information technology improves. Sometimes also termed as behavior-based price discrimination, dynamic pricing based on consumers’ purchase history can result in wasteful switching of consumers between sellers. Its effects on consumer welfare and total welfare are thus generally ambiguous, even when it lowers equilibrium prices.

Price discrimination is a form of differential pricing based on differences in price elasticities of demand for different consumers. Differential pricing can also arise because the costs differ for serving different groups of consumers. As Chen and Schwartz (2015) show, the welfare effects of cost-based differential pricing are very different from those of demand-based differential pricing. They find that, unlike demand-based differential pricing (i.e., classic third price discrimination) which often lowers consumer welfare (Cowan, 2012), cost-based differential pricing increases consumer welfare under broad conditions, and increases total welfare even more likely.

References: Aguirre, I., Cowan, S., and Vickers, J. "Monopoly Price Discrimination and Demand Curvature." American Economic Review, Vol. 100 (2010), pp. 1601--15.

Chen, Y. “Paying Customers to Switch.” Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 6, 877–897, 1997.

Chen, Y. and M. Schwartz. “Differential Pricing when Costs Differ: A Welfare Analysis”, RAND Journal of Economics, 46: 442-460, 2015.

Corts, K. "Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly: All-Out Competition and Strategic Commitment” RAND Journal of Economics, 29, 306-323, 1998

Cowan, S. "Third-Degree Price Discrimination and Consumer Surplus." Journal of Industrial Economics, Vol. 60 (2012), pp. 244-50.

Fudenberg, D. and J. Tirole (2000), “Customer Poaching and Brand Switching,” RAND Journal of Economics 31, 634-657.

Holmes, T.J., 1989, ‘‘The Effects of Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly,’’ American Economic Review, 79, 244–250.

Pigou, A.C. The Economics of Welfare. London: Macmillan, 1920.

Schmalensee, R. "Output and Welfare Implications of Monopolistic Third-Degree Price Discrimination." American Economic Review, Vol. 71 (1981), pp. 242-47.

Stole, L. "Price Discrimination and Competition." in M. Armstrong and R. Porter, eds.,The Handbook of Industrial Organization, Vol. 3, Elsevier, 2007.

Taylor, C. “Supplier Surng: Price Discrimination in Markets with Repeat Purchases.” RAND Journal of Economics 34, 223-246, 2003.

Varian, H.R. "Price Discrimination and Social Welfare." American Economic Review, Vol. 75 (1985), pp. 870-5.

Villas-Boas, J. M. (1999), Dynamic Competition with Customer Recognition. RAND Journal of Economics 30, 604-631."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Chen has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference 1: Yongmin Chen & Tianle Zhang, 2012. "Group Coupons: Interpersonal Bundling on the Internet," Working Papers 12-09, NET Institute.


 * Reference 2: Marius Schwartz & Yongmin Chen, 2013. "Differential Pricing When Costs Differ: A Welfare Analysis," Working Papers gueconwpa~13-13-01, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.


 * Reference 3: Chen, Yongmin & Schwartz, Marius, 2012. "Beyond price discrimination: welfare under differential pricing when costs also differ," MPRA Paper 43393, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 13:03, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Zhou's comment on this article
Dr. Zhou has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"a section on behavior based price discrimination should be added. This is a new development in this topic during the past 10 years or so. Fudenberg D, Villas-Boas MJ. Behavior-Based Price Discrimination and Customer Recognition. In: Economics and Information Systems, Volume 1. Oxford: Elsevier Science ; 2007."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Zhou has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Armstrong, Mark & Zhou, Jidong, 2010. "Conditioning prices on search behaviour," MPRA Paper 19985, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 14:29, 7 July 2016 (UTC)