Avner Strulov-Shlain
Economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business at the time of publication, and author of the 2023 paper on left-digit bias and firm pricing.
Who they are
Avner Strulov-Shlain is the sole author of More than a Penny's Worth: Left-Digit Bias and Firm Pricing, published online in The Review of Economic Studies in December 2022 and in the print issue of September 2023. The journal lists his affiliation as the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Key papers
Strulov-Shlain, A. (2023). More than a penny's worth: Left-digit bias and firm pricing. The Review of Economic Studies, 90(5), 2612-2645. doi:10.1093/restud/rdac082
The paper uses retail scanner data on 3,500 products sold by 25 US chains.
Key ideas
The paper estimates that consumers respond to a one-cent increase from a price ending in 99 as if it were an increase of more than 20 cents. It reports that retailers' pricing implies a much smaller perceived bias than the demand they face reflects, describes their pricing as closer to heuristics than optimisation, and estimates that they forgo 1 to 4 per cent of potential gross profits. See The Left-Digit Effect.
Sources
- Strulov-Shlain, A. (2023). More than a penny's worth: Left-digit bias and firm pricing. The Review of Economic Studies, 90(5), 2612-2645. doi:10.1093/restud/rdac082