Resource allocation based on dynamic pricing: what is its source of power?
Abstract
The article addresses the issues of dynamic pricing in taxi and courier delivery markets, where search frictions and matching failures play a significant role, leading to increased costs and reduced efficiency in resource allocation. The study demonstrates how the use of matching technologies and dynamic pricing helps reduce costs and enhance resource allocation efficiency amid changing demand and supply. A taxi service market model is constructed to analyze the impact of price surge multipliers on eliminating matching failures. The analysis showed that dynamic pricing reduces the probability of matching failures, enabling market equilibrium, especially during periods of high demand. This improves consumer and producer welfare.
About the Authors
O. A. MarkovaRussian Federation
Olga A. Markova, Candidate of Economic Sciences (Ph.D.), Senior Researcher at the Department of Competition and Industrial Policy, Faculty of Economics
Moscow
A. Y. Stavniychuk
Russian Federation
Anna Y. Stavniychuk, Postgraduate student, Researcher at the Department of Competition and Industrial Policy, Junior Researcher at the Laboratory of Digital Economy Studies, Faculty of Economics
Moscow
K. A. Ionkina
Russian Federation
Karina A. Ionkina, Researcher at the Department of Competition and Industrial Policy, Researcher at the Laboratory of Digital Economy Studies, Faculty of Economics
Moscow
References
1. Ivanov P.V., Solntsev I.V. Dinamicheskoe tsenoobrazovanie biletnykh programm sportivnogo meropriyatiya: primer ZAO «FK Zenit». Rossiyskiy zhurnal menedzhmenta. 2014. Vol. 12. No. 4. P. 79–98 (In Russ.).
2. Markova O.A., Stavniychuk A.Yu. Izmenenie antimonopol'nogo regulirovaniya i sliyaniya v Rossii: manipulirovanie tsenoy sdelki i neobkhodimost' dopolnitel'nogo nadzora. Voprosy ekonomiki. 2024. Vol 10. No. 94–109 (In Russ.).
3. Shastitko A.E., Kurdin A.A., Markova O.A., Meleshkina A.I. i dr. Effekty gosudarstvennogo regulirovaniya rynka perevozok passazhirov i bagazha legkovym taksi. M.: Ekonomicheskiy fakul'tet MGU imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 2021. 144 p (In Russ.).
4. Aguirre I., Cowan S., Vickers J. Monopoly price discrimination and demand curvature. American Economic Review. 2010. Vol. 100. No. 4. P. 1601–1615.
5. Aryal G., Murry C., Williams J. W. Price discrimination in international airline markets. Review of Economic Studies. 2024. Vol. 91. No. 2. P. 641–689.
6. Ashby D., Smith A.F. Evidence‐based medicine as Bayesian decision‐making. Statistics in Medicine. 2000. Vol. 19. No. 23. P. 3291–3305.
7. Baley I., Veldkamp L. Bayesian learning. Handbook of Economic Expectations. Academic Press, 2023. P. 717–748.
8. Bergemann D., Brooks B., Morris S. The limits of price discrimination. American Economic Review. 2015. Vol. 105. No. 3. P. 921–957.
9. Boeing G., Ha J. Resilient by design: Simulating street network disruptions across every urban area in the world. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. 2024. Vol. 182. P. 104016.
10. Brancaccio G., Kalouptsidi M., Papageorgiou T., Rosaia N. Search frictions and efficiency in decentralized transport markets. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2023. Vol. 138. No. 4. P. 2451– 2503.
11. Brent D.A., Gross A. Dynamic road pricing and the value of time and reliability. Journal of Regional Science. 2018. Vol. 58. No. 2. P. 330–349.
12. Buchholz N. Spatial equilibrium, search frictions, and dynamic efficiency in the taxi industry. The Review of Economic Studies. 2022. Vol. 89. No. 2. P. 556–593.
13. Camerer C., Babcock L., Loewenstein G., Thaler R. Labor supply of New York City cabdrivers: One day at a time. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 1997. Vol. 112. No. 2. P. 407–441.
14. Castillo J., Knoepfle D.T., Weyl E.G. Surge Pricing Solves the Wild Goose Chase. SSRN Electronic Journal. 2017.
15. Castillo J.C., Knoepfle D.T., Weyl E.G. Matching and pricing in ride hailing: Wild goose chases and how to solve them. Available at SSRN. 2023. No. 2890666.
16. Cetin T., Deakin E. Regulation of taxis and the rise of ridesharing. Transport Policy. 2019. Vol. 76. P. 149–158.
17. Chen N. Perishable good dynamic pricing under competition: An empirical study in the airline markets. Available at SSRN. 2018. No. 3228392.
18. Chen L., Mislove A., Wilson C. Peeking beneath the hood of Uber. Proceedings of the 2015 Internet Measurement Conference. 2015. P. 495–508.
19. Chen M.K., Sheldon M. Dynamic pricing in a labor market: Surge pricing and the supply of Uber driver-partners. University of California (Los Angeles) Working Paper. 2015: URL: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download (accessed: 20.09.2024).
20. Cho S., Lee G., Rust J., Yu M. Optimal dynamic hotel pricing. Working paper. 2018.
21. Cohen P., Hahn R., Hall J., Levitt S., Metcalfe R. Using big data to estimate consumer surplus: The case of Uber. National Bureau of Economic Research. 2016. No. w22627.
22. Cramer J., Krueger A.B. Disruptive change in the taxi business: The case of Uber. American Economic Review. 2016. Vol. 106. No. 5. P. 177–182.
23. Desai K., Dutta G. A dynamic pricing approach to electricity prices in the Indian context. International Journal of Revenue Management. 2013. Vol. 7. No. 3–4. P. 268–288. DOI: 10.1504/IJRM.2013.059625.
24. Farber H.S. Reference-dependent preferences and labor supply: The case of New York City taxi drivers. American Economic Review. 2008. Vol. 98. No. 3. P. 1069–1082.
25. Faruqui A., Sergici S. Household response to dynamic pricing of electricity: a survey of 15 experiments. Journal of Regulatory Economics. 2010. Vol. 38. No. 2. P. 193–225.
26. Frechette G.R., Lizzeri A., Salz T. Frictions in a competitive, regulated market: Evidence from taxis. American Economic Review. 2019. Vol. 109. No. 8. P. 2954–2992.
27. Gibbs C., Guttentag D., Gretzel U., Yao L., Morton J. Use of dynamic pricing strategies by Airbnb hosts. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 2018. Vol. 30. No. 1. P. 2–20.
28. Guda H., Subramanian U. Your Uber is arriving: Managing on-demand workers through surge pricing, forecast communication, and worker incentives. Management Science. 2019. Vol. 65. No. 5. P. 1995–2014.
29. Kobritz J., Palmer S. Dynamic pricing: the next frontier in the evolution of ticket pricing in sports. Review of Management Innovation and Creativity. 2011. Vol. 4. No. 9. P. 118.
30. McCann B. T. Using Bayesian updating to improve decisions under uncertainty. California Management Review. 2020. Vol. 63. No. 1. P. 26–40.
31. Smith L. The marriage model with search frictions. Journal of Political Economy. 2006. Vol. 114. No. 6. P. 1124–1144.
32. Stute J., Kühnbach M. Dynamic pricing and the flexible consumer – Investigating grid and financial implications: A case study for Germany. Energy Strategy Reviews. 2023. Vol. 45. P. 100987.
33. Van den Berg G.J., Van Vuuren A. The effect of search frictions on wages. Labour Economics. 2010. Vol. 17. No. 6. P. 875–885.
34. Van Den Berg V., Verhoef E.T. Winning or losing from dynamic bottleneck congestion pricing? The distributional effects of road pricing with heterogeneity in values of time and schedule delay. Journal of Public Economics. 2011. Vol. 95. No. 7–8. P. 983–992.
35. Williams K. R. The welfare effects of dynamic pricing: Evidence from airline markets.Econometrica. 2022. Vol. 90. No. 2. P. 831–858.
36. Wolak F.A. Do residential customers respond to hourly prices? Evidence from a dynamic pricing experiment. American Economic Review. 2011. Vol. 101. No. 3. P. 83–87.
37. Yang J., Purevjav A.O., Li S. The marginal cost of traffic congestion and road pricing: Evidence from a natural experiment in Beijing. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. 2020. Vol. 12. No. 1. P. 418–453.
Review
For citations:
Markova O.A., Stavniychuk A.Y., Ionkina K.A. Resource allocation based on dynamic pricing: what is its source of power? Scientific Research of Faculty of Economics. Electronic Journal. 2025;17(1):79-97. (In Russ.)