IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20200060.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cyclicality of Add-on Pricing: Evidence from Extended Warranties

Author

Listed:
  • Branko Boskovic

    (University of Alberta)

  • Sacha Kapoor

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

  • Agnieszka Markiewicz

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

  • Barry Scholnick

    (University of Alberta)

Abstract

What explains apparent price rigidity over the business cycle? This paper shows that price fluctuations may be hidden in prices of add ons. Using 10 years of extended warranty data from a nationwide Canadian retailer, we show that extended warranty prices respond strongly to changes in local economic activity whereas prices of underlying durable goods do not. The procyclicality is driven by a shift in price setting behavior, where local stores use extended warranty discounts to make base durable demand less price elastic and, as a result, increase sales of durable goods. Discounts on extended warranties were especially sharp during the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Branko Boskovic & Sacha Kapoor & Agnieszka Markiewicz & Barry Scholnick, 2020. "Cyclicality of Add-on Pricing: Evidence from Extended Warranties," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-060/VI, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200060
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/20060.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Add-on pricing; business cycles;

    JEL classification:

    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200060. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.