IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rim/rimwps/24-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Gouging or Market Forces? Fairness Perceptions of Price Hikes in the Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Avichai Snir

    (Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, Israel)

  • Daniel Levy

    (Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, Israel; Department of Economics, Emory University, USA; ICEA; ISET, TSU; Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis)

  • Dudi Levy

    (Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, Israel)

  • Haipeng Allan Chen

    (Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, USA)

Abstract

We report the results of surveys we conducted in the US and Israel in 2020, a time when many prices increased following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess respondents’ perceptions of price increases, we focus on goods whose prices have increased during the pandemic, including some essential goods. Consistent with the principle of dual entitlement, we find that respondents perceive price increases as more acceptable if they are due to cost shocks than if they are due to demand shocks. However, we also find large differences across the two populations, as well as across goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Avichai Snir & Daniel Levy & Dudi Levy & Haipeng Allan Chen, 2024. "Price Gouging or Market Forces? Fairness Perceptions of Price Hikes in the Pandemic," Working Paper series 24-03, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
  • Handle: RePEc:rim:rimwps:24-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://rcea.org/RePEc/pdf/wp24-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fairness Perceptions; Price Increases; The Pandemic; Dual Entitlement; Consumer Antagonism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E70 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    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:rim:rimwps:24-03. 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: Marco Savioli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcfeait.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.