Dynamic Price Discrimination in Airlines

Prices for the same flight change substantially depending on the time of purchase. Labeling this time-variation as discriminatory is misleading because the cost of an unsold airline seat changes with inventory, days before departure and aggregate demand expectations. This paper uses a unique dataset with round-the-clock posted fares to identify a dynamic price discrimination component. Consistent with agents forming expectations of future prices, we find higher prices during office hours (when business travelers are likely to buy tickets) and lower prices in the evening (when leisure travelers are more likely to purchase). As the proportion of business travelers increases closer to departure, both price dispersion and price discrimination become larger. We also find that price discrimination is more pronounced for low cost carriers than for legacy carriers

Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.Comment: invited review, 36 figures, 900+ references; minor stylistic changes from the published versio