ABSTRACT
Renato teaches Leona how to bargain with Italian shopkeepers and is told “you wonder, you frown, you dwell on what is poor.” She is told after she hears the price that she should not immediately accept it. We learn the shopkeepers are attempting to charge each customer as much as they possibly can, and those who won’t go through the hassle of bargaining will pay more. Economists would say that the shopkeepers are price discriminators. They are attempting to charge each person a different price based on their maximum willingness-to-pay, instead of charging each person the same price. In fact, since the shopkeepers might literally charge a different price to every customer, we could call these shopkeepers first-degree, or perfect, price discriminators. There are also other ways firms could price discriminate.
