We measure friction in the matching of students and law schools as the number of unnecessary student applications and school admissions that have to be undertaken per actual matriculation. We show that friction increases with student and school attractiveness, but decreases for top schools and...

Using a survey approach, we ask consumers to reveal their preferences over pricing schemes that may differ in terms of the average price of consumption, the amount of price variation, and the probability of being rationed. We find that consumers dislike pricing schemes that vary prices more but...

Pricing schemes that vary prices in response to demand shocks may antagonize consumers and reduce demand. At the same time, consumers may take advantage of the opportunities offered by price changes. Overall, the net impact of varying price on demand is ambiguous. We investigate the issue...

Survey evidence suggests firms do not use pricing policies that vary prices in response to demand changes because they fear that such practices would antagonize consumers. We investigate this hypothesis using a dataset from a firm that has experimented with different pricing schemes. Each scheme...

Concert tickets can either be sold at a single price or at multiple prices corresponding to different seating categories. We study the relationship between price discrimination and revenue by examining variations in the number of seating categories across concert, tour, artist, location, and...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we investigate Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth both predictable and unpredictable demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of...

Concert tickets can either be sold at a single price or at different prices to reflect the various levels of seating categories available. Here we consider how two product characteristics (the artist's age and venue capacity) influence the likelihood that pop music concert tickets will be sold...