EconBase
← All papers

Identification of Direct Socio-Geographical Price Discrimination: An Empirical Study on iPhones

Davidson Cheng

arXiv 19 Jan 2022 · Econometrics

arXiv:2201.07903 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Price discrimination is a practice where firms utilize varying sensitivities to prices among consumers to increase profits. The welfare effects of price discrimination are not agreed on among economists, but identification of such actions may contribute to our standing of firms' pricing behaviors. In this letter, I use econometric tools to analyze whether Apple Inc, one of the largest companies in the globe, is practicing price discrimination on the basis of socio-economical and geographical factors. My results indicate that iPhones are significantly (p $<$ 0.01) more expensive in markets where competitions are weak or where Apple has a strong market presence. Furthermore, iPhone prices are likely to increase (p $<$ 0.01) in developing countries/regions or markets with high income inequality.

Citation extraction

0
references
1
in-text mentions
1
distinct cited
0
self-citations
3,963
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Appendix” · 57% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
*unmatched citation key *0.40511100%

Showing the top 1 of 1 scored citations. 1 of these could not be matched to a bibliography entry, so only the citation key is shown.