Abstract We use a field experiment to study price discrimination in a market with price posting and negotiation. Motivated by concerns that low-income consumers do poorly in markets with privately negotiated prices, we built a call center staffed with actors armed with bargaining scripts to reveal negotiated prices and their determinants. Our actors implement sequential bargaining games under incomplete information in the field. By experimentally manipulating how information is revealed, we generate sequences of price offers that allow us to identify price discrimination within negotiations based on retailer perceptions of consumers’ search and switching costs. We also document differences in price distributions between entrants and incumbents, reflecting differences in captivity of their respective consumer bases. Finally, we show that higher prices paid by lower-income subsidy recipients in our market is not due to discriminatory targeting; they can be explained by variation in consumer willingness and ability to search and bargain.

中文翻译：

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协商价格歧视：零售电力的现场实验

摘要 我们使用现场实验来研究价格发布和谈判市场中的价格歧视。出于对低收入消费者在私下协商价格市场上表现不佳的担忧，我们建立了一个呼叫中心，配备有谈判脚本的演员，以揭示协商价格及其决定因素。我们的参与者在该领域的不完全信息下实施顺序讨价还价游戏。通过实验性地操纵信息的显示方式，我们生成了一系列价格报价，使我们能够根据零售商对消费者搜索和转换成本的看法在谈判中识别价格歧视。我们还记录了进入者和现有者之间价格分布的差异，反映了他们各自消费群的俘虏差异。最后，我们表明，我们市场上低收入补贴接受者支付的更高价格不是由于歧视性目标；它们可以通过消费者搜索和讨价还价的意愿和能力的变化来解释。