Economies of Scale, Unprofitable Markets, and the Teaching of Dumping in International Economics' Textbooks

Park (2000) and Round and McIver (2006), both of which appear in the Journal of Economic Education, discuss aspects of price discrimination. Park shows how engaging in price discrimination can lead a firm that is already selling in a profitable market to sell also in an unprofitable one. Round and McIver examine how authors of textbooks in Intermediate Microeconomics present third-degree price discrimination. The present article extends the analysis in Park by illustrating how price discrimination can lead a firm to sell simultaneously in two markets, each of which is unprofitable in its own right. Further, the present article uses the framework developed by Round and McIver to examine how authors of textbooks in International Economics present price discrimination between national markers, i.e. dumping