Working paper
“Consumer fairness concerns and third-degree price discrimination of two-sided platforms,” with Jing Su
Presentations: The 14th Lisbon Meetings in Game Theory and Applications 2025; 30th ENTER Jamboree 2025; XIII IBEO Workshop 2024; 7th Doctoral Workshop on the Economics of Digitization 2024; LiDAM Spring Doctoral Workshop in Economics 2023
Abstract
This paper studies how consumers’ concerns about fairness interact with third-degree price discrimination of a two-sided monopoly platform. We show that the presence of fairness concerns creates a negative demand externality from low-willingness-to-pay to high-willingness-to-pay consumers, that is, charging less to the former reduces the latter’s demand. With this novel externality, price-discriminating among consumers triggers fairness concerns, which lowers consumer-side demand and ultimately restricts the platform’s profit exploitation from the seller side. Hence, a platform whose profit potential from sellers is larger would take consumers’ fairness concerns more seriously and price-discriminate less. The results can explain why some major online platforms—despite the huge profit potential of targeting prices—shy away from price discrimination in response to consumers’ fairness concerns, while others care little about unfairness complaints when price-discriminating among consumers.
“Standardized testing for college entrance: evidence from a major reform in China,” with Philip Verwimp
Presentations: XIII IBEO Workshop 2024; LiDAM Spring Doctoral Workshop in Economics 2024; ECARES Xmas PhD Workshop 2021
Work in progress
“Manipulating price inequality aversion without obfuscation,” with Jing Su and Litao Duan
Presentations: Prague Conference on Behavioral Sciences 2026; Southern Europe Experimental Team’s Meeting 2026; ECARES St. Nicolas/Xmas PhD Workshop 2025
Abstract
Previous studies have stressed that obfuscating references for price comparison among differently priced homogeneous goods is a key to reducing consumers’ aversion to price inequality. We provide evidence from two series of laboratory experiments, showing the feasibility of manipulating consumers’ aversion to a fully transparent disadvantageous price difference. First, price framing by introducing a higher reference price makes little difference to consumers’ perception of price inequality, but it can increase the tolerance of perceived price inequality when the price difference is neither large nor small enough for a binary saliency judgment on the price inequality. Second, if consumers do not perceive their price offers as the disadvantaged minority, their price inequality aversion decreases fast in the displayed share of price offers no better than theirs. With practical cases, we further discuss how market gatekeepers can exploit by delicately displaying prices for the same good to consumers.
“Organized charity and consumer sympathy in the influencer economy”
Sirui Li 