Price Discrimination in Airline Tickets

Using unique transaction data, we compare tickets on the same airline and route that are purchased on different days of the week, after controlling for the day of week of travel, the ticket restrictions, the demand characteristics of the flights, and the number of days in advance that the ticket is purchased. We find that fares are 5% lower when purchased on the weekend. We conjecture that this is a form of price discrimination. If airlines believe that weekend purchasers are more likely to be price-elastic leisure travelers, then they may offer lower prices on weekends when the mix of purchasing customers makes demand more price elastic.

Source.  

When to buy that plane ticket?

Michele Higgins writes:  

Recent fare analysis by the Airlines Reporting Corporation seems to challenge the conventional wisdom that the earlier you book, the less expensive your fare will be. In January, the corporation, which processes ticket transactions for airlines and travel agencies, reported that over the past four years passengers paid the lowest price for domestic flights when buying just about six weeks in advance.

There you go. Now the question is how a change in consumer behavior can change prices six weeks in advance.  

Keep reading the New York Times article by Michele Higgins. 

Landlocked or Policy Locked?

. . . [M]any landlocked countries restrict trade in the very services that connect them with the rest of the world. On average, telecommunications and air-transport policies are significantly more restrictive in landlocked countries than elsewhere. The phenomenon is most starkly visible in Sub-Saharan Africa and is associated with lower levels of political accountability.

That is from the new paper "Landlocked or Policy Locked? How Services Trade Protection Deepens Economic Isolation" by Borchert et al.

STRI: Services Trade Restrictiveness Index.