Capital Stock

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Sunday, 21 December 2008

Multimarket price discrimination on an island

Posted on 11:44 by Unknown
Could some of the price difference between goods in Northern Ireland and Ireland be down to price discrimination by retailers? Clearly, some of the difference is due to difference in VAT in the two states and a lot of it is accounted for by the recent depreciation (collapse?) in the value of sterling. However, the Irish government has written to British high street retailers in recent days expressing concern over the high prices of goods in their outlets in the Republic compared to the North. Is this what economists call third-degree price discrimination, i.e. charging different prices in different market segments?

The retailers are charging a higher price to those not willing to travel and a lower price to more price sensitive customers who are willing to travel to the North. Is the government moral outrage justified? Maybe, but then they should be also writing to the following:

  • Cinemas who charge higher prices to adults than students.
  • Retailers who charge higher prices to some shoppers than those who gather money off coupons and bring them to the shop.
  • Restaurants who charge higher prices to diners than to those who arrive before 7pm.

I'm not a student, I don't clip coupons and the babysitter doesn't arrive early enough for me to avail of early bird specials. It is appaling that I have to pay a higher price than others for these exact same goods. The government should be writing letters ensuring that I get to these lower prices. Or maybe the moral outrage about cheaper prices in the North is not justified at all and the government is engaged in is patriotic tokenism?

Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to Facebook
Posted in | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • The Two Irish Economies
    The following graph illustrates the destruction of employment that has occurred in the Irish labour market since the middle of 2007. Emp...
  • Irish banks are hugely profitable
    In the midst of the disaster that is the Irish banking failure, it is useful to note that Irish banks are hugely profitably businesses on an...
  • They think it's all over....it is not
    The CSO have released the National Accounts for the third quarter of 2009. The figures reveal that seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 0.3% in ...
  • Core deflation eases slightly
    The headline measure of price changes in Ireland  from the latest CPI release may be heading towards inflation once again – the June annual...
  • Exchequer balance stops getting worse but…
    After more than two years of huge deterioration in our public finances, the March Exchequer Return suggests that the Exchequer Balance is f...
  • Tragedy of the Fishes
    In 1968 Garret Hardin published a highly influential article in Science called The Tragedy of the Commons.  A PDF reprint of the article is...
  • Grade Inflation
    Based on reports we know that Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe, is considering the impact of grade inflation in second- and third-leve...
  • Two lines for a decade
    The following graph contains two lines tracked for almost a decade.  Click the image to enlarge.  The two lines are: The Consumer Price...
  • Putting an Economics Degree to Work
    Robert Mugabe, President (Dictator?) of Zimbabwe does not suffer from a shortage of education . In the 1950s, 60s and 70s he earned no less ...
  • CSO Data from last week
    The CSO were busy last week with a lot of key economic data released.  The data published included Quarterly National Accounts (Q4 2009...

Categories

  • Bond Yields
  • Car Sales
  • Central Bank Statistics
  • Consumer Price Index
  • Corporation Tax
  • Credit Card Statistics
  • Department of Finance
  • Earnings Data
  • Exchequer Returns
  • External Trade
  • Industrial Production
  • Insolvencies
  • Mortgage Arrears
  • National Accounts
  • people respond to incentives
  • Port Traffic
  • Presentations
  • Private Sector Credit
  • QNHS
  • Retail Sales
  • Tax Evasion

Blog Archive

  • ►  2010 (110)
    • ►  July (7)
    • ►  June (4)
    • ►  May (11)
    • ►  April (32)
    • ►  March (31)
    • ►  February (14)
    • ►  January (11)
  • ►  2009 (59)
    • ►  December (18)
    • ►  November (2)
    • ►  October (2)
    • ►  August (2)
    • ►  July (4)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (6)
    • ►  March (3)
    • ►  February (5)
    • ►  January (16)
  • ▼  2008 (7)
    • ▼  December (7)
      • Renters are getting some too
      • How much interest are we saving?
      • Automatic Stimulation?
      • The Broken Window of "Patriotic Duty"
      • Multimarket price discrimination on an island
      • Is there any good news?
      • Parking, Driving, Drinking and Printing
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile