Price Discrimination within and across EMU Markets: Evidence from French Exporters

Francois Fontaine, Julien Martin and Isabelle Mejean

No 26246, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the cross-sectional dispersion of prices paid by EMU importers for French products. We document a significant level of price dispersion both within product categories across exporters, and within exporters across buyers. This latter source of price discrepancies, sellers' price discrimination across buyers, is indicative of deviations from the law-of-one price. Price discrimination (i) is substantial within the EU, within the euro area, and within EMU countries; (ii) has not decreased over the last two decades; (iii) is more prevalent among the largest firms and for more differentiated products; (iv) is lower among retailers and wholesalers; (v) is also observed within almost perfectly homogenous product categories, which suggests that a non-negligible share of price discrimination is triggered by heterogeneous markups rather than quality or composition effects. We then estimate a rich statistical decomposition of the variance of prices to shed light on exporters' pricing strategies.

JEL-codes: F1 F14 F4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-eec, nep-int and nep-opm
Note: IFM
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Price Discrimination within and across EMU Markets: Evidence from French Exporters , François Fontaine, Julien Martin, Isabelle Mejean. in NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2019 , Forbes and Gourinchas. 2020
Published as François Fontaine & Julien Martin & Isabelle Mejean, 2020. "Price discrimination within and across EMU markets: Evidence from French exporters," Journal of International Economics, .

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Related works:
Journal Article: Price discrimination within and across EMU markets: Evidence from French exporters (2020)
Working Paper: Price discrimination within and across EMU markets: Evidence from French exporters (2020)
Working Paper: Price discrimination within and across EMU markets: Evidence from French exporters (2020)
Chapter: Price Discrimination within and across EMU Markets: Evidence from French Exporters (2019)
Working Paper: Price Discrimination within and across EMU Markets: Evidence from French Exporters (2019)
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