TY - JOUR AU - Zettelmeyer,Florian AU - Morton,Fiona Scott AU - Silva-Risso,Jorge TI - Scarcity Rents in Car Retailing: Evidence from Inventory Fluctuations at Dealerships JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 12177 PY - 2006 Y2 - May 2006 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12177 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12177.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Florian Zettelmeyer Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Marketing Department, Fourth Floor 2001 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208 Tel: 847-467-0932 Fax: 847-491-2498 E-Mail: f-zettelmeyer@kellogg.northwestern.edu Fiona Scott Morton Yale School of Management Box 208200 New Haven, CT 06520-8200 Tel: 203/432-5569 Fax: 203/432-6974 E-Mail: fiona.scottmorton@yale.edu Jorge Silva-Risso School of Business Administration Anderson Hall University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA 92521 E-Mail: jorge.silva-risso@ucr.edu AB - Price variation for identical cars at the same dealership is commonly assumed to arise because dealers with market power are able to price discriminate among their customers. In this paper we show that while price discrimination may be one element of price variation, price variation also arises from inventory fluctuations. Inventory fluctuations create scarcity rents for cars that are in short supply. The price variation due to inventory fluctuations thus functions to efficiently allocate particular cars that are in restricted supply to those customers who value them most highly. Our empirical results show that a dealership moving from a situation of inventory shortage to an average inventory level lowers transaction prices by about 1% ceteris paribus, corresponding to 15% of dealers' average per vehicle profit margin or $250 on the average car. Shorter resupply times also decrease transaction prices for cars in high demand. For traditional dealerships, inventory explains 49% of the combined inventory and demographic components of the predicted price. For so-called 'no-haggle' dealerships, the percentage explained by inventory increases to 74%. ER -