We study intertemporal price discrimination when consumers can store for future consumption needs. To make the problem tractable we offer a simple model of demand dynamics, which we estimate using market level data. Optimal pricing involves temporary price reductions that enable sellers to...

We compare outcomes obtained by sellers who listed their home on a newly developed For-Sale-By-Owner (FSBO) web site versus those who used an agent and the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). We do not find support for the hypothesis that listing on the MLS helps sellers obtain a signi.cantly higher...

Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in a large increase in the quantity sold. We explore whether the data support the hypothesis that these increases are, at least partly, due to dynamic consumer behavior: at low prices consumers stockpile for future...

Storable products allow consumers to time their purchases to exploit price fluctuations. It has been documented that during promotions consumers buy more. The additional purchases are potentially intended not only for current use, but to be stockpiled for future consumption. This paper discusses...

One of the puzzles of store-level scanner data is the lack of a dip in quantity sold in the weeks following a promotion. Such a dip is predicted by a consumer inventory model. During a promotion consumers buy more, not only for current consumption, but stockpile for future consumption. The...

We document the evolution of productivity in a steel mini mill with fixed capital, producing an unchanged product with Leontief technology. Despite almost un- changed production conditions, output doubles within the sample period (12 years). We decompose the gains into: downtime reductions, more...

This paper develops a model of nonlinear pricing of storable goods. We show that storability imposes novel constraints on a monopolist's ability to extract surplus. We then show that the attempt to relax these constraints can generate cyclical patterns in pricing and sales, even when consumers...

Affordable higher education is, and has been, a key element of social policy in the United States with broad bipartisan support. Financial aid has substantially increased the number of people who complete university - generally thought to be a good thing. We show, however, that making education...

We discuss a class of markets for durable goods where efficiency (or approximate efficiency) is obtained despite the presence of information asymmetries. In the model, the number of times a good has changed hands (the vintage of the good) is an accurate signal of its quality, each consumer...

We study dynamic monopoly pricing of storable goods in an environment where demand changes over time. The literature on durables has focused on incentives to delay purchases. Our analysis focuses on a different intertemporal demand incentive. The key force on the consumer side is advance...