Price Discrimination

The economic analysis of price discrimination requires careful and thorough analysis of the data to ensure, among other things, that the transactions being evaluated are comparable and that the prices to the buyers have been adjusted, as appropriate, for all discounts, including deferred allowances, rebates, and other payments to the buyers.

In our work, we evaluate:

• Whether a seller has charged higher prices for the same products and during the same period to one purchaser than to a second purchaser
• The timeframe the buyers competed in reselling the products or employed the products as inputs into the production of competing downstream goods
• The magnitudes and durations of the price differences
• Whether the price differences were justified by cost differences or efforts by the seller to meet competitors’ price
• The effects of the price differences on the competitive relationship between buyers and on the competitive process more generally