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The Flat Rental Puzzle

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  • Sungjin Cho
  • John Rust

Abstract

Why is the price of renting an automobile "flat" as a function of its age or odometer value? Specifically, why is it that car rental companies do not offer customers the option of renting older cars at a discount, instead of offering only relatively new cars at full price? We also tackle a related puzzle: why do car rental companies trade-in their vehicles so early? Most US companies purchase brand new rental cars and replace them after 2 years or when their odometer exceeds 34,000 km. That is a very costly strategy due to the well-known by rapid depreciation in used car prices. We show that in a competitive rental market, prices are a declining function of odometer and cars are rented over their full economic lifespan. Our solution to these puzzles is that actual rental markets are not fully competitive and firms may be behaving suboptimally. We provide a case study of a large car rental company that provided us access to its operating data. We develop a model of the company's operations that predicts that the company can significantly increase its profits by keeping its rental cars twice as long as it currently does, discounting the rental prices of older vehicles to induce its customers to rent them. The company undertook an experiment to test our model's predictions. We report initial findings from this experiment which involved over 4500 rentals of over 500 cars in 4 locations over a 5-month period. The results are consistent with the predictions of our model, and suggest that a properly chosen declining rental price function can increase overall revenues. Profits also increase significantly, since doubling the holding period of rental cars cuts discounted replacement costs by nearly 40%. Copyright , Wiley-Blackwell.

Suggested Citation

  • Sungjin Cho & John Rust, 2010. "The Flat Rental Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(2), pages 560-594.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:77:y:2010:i:2:p:560-594
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-937X.2009.00556.x
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Eugenio J. Miravete & Katja Seim & Jeff Thurk, 2020. "One Markup to Rule Them All: Taxation by Liquor Pricing Regulation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 1-41, February.
    2. Gautier, Pieter & Siegmann, Arjen & van Vuuren, Aico, 2023. "Real-estate agent commission structure and sales performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 163-187.
    3. Victor Aguirregabiria & Francis Guiton, 2022. "Decentralized Decision-Making in Retail Chains: Evidence from Inventory Management," Working Papers tecipa-722, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    4. John Rust & Sungjin Cho, 2018. "Optimal Dynamic Hotel Pricing," 2018 Meeting Papers 179, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. McClelland John & Rust John, 2018. "Strategic Timing of Investment over the Business Cycle: Machine Replacement in the US Rental Industry," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 238(3-4), pages 295-351, July.
    6. Alessandro Iaria, & Wang, Ao, 2021. "An Empirical Model of Quantity Discounts with Large Choice Sets," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1378, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    7. Sacha Kapoor, 2020. "Inefficient incentives and nonprice allocations: Experimental evidence from big‐box restaurants," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 401-419, April.
    8. Germ'an Reyes, 2022. "Coarse Wage-Setting and Behavioral Firms," Papers 2206.01114, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    9. John Rust & Richard Staelin, 2011. "Rust’s and Staelin’s Comments on: “A structural model of sales force compensation dynamics: estimation and field implementation” by Sanjog Misra and Harikesh Nair," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 259-265, September.
    10. Heidhues, Paul & Köszegi, Botond, 2018. "Behavioral Industrial Organization," CEPR Discussion Papers 12988, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Julian Runge & Jonathan Levav & Harikesh S. Nair, 2022. "Price promotions and “freemium” app monetization," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 101-139, June.

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