Makoto Wantanabe
Why are some goods (e.g. airline tickets) sold cheap to early buyers while others (e.g. theatre tickets) offer discounts to those who buy late? Makato Wantanabe, in a paper co-authored with Marc Möller, has determined that price discrimination strategies depend on the rationing rule, capacity costs and the availability of temporal capacity limits, price commitment and resale. In their model, selling exclusively before or after buyers have learned their demands might be profit maximising, and price discrimination may take the form of a clearance sale or an advance purchase discount.
Makoto Watanabe’s research focus is on dynamic trading and pricing patterns, search and matching theory and its applications as well as on the macroeconomic implications of market transactional problems. He was a guest researcher at CESifo from 29 July to 2 August.
Mr Watanabe received masters degrees in economics from Kyoto University and the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his PhD in economics at the University of Essex in 2006. He has taught at Universidad Carlos III and is currently associate professor at VU University Amsterdam. He is a member of the CESifo Research Network and a research fellow of the Tinbergen Institute.