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One Person One Price - The American Prospect

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Six years ago, I was at a conference at the University of Chicago, the intellectual heart of corporate-friendly capitalism, when my eyes found the cover of the Chicago Booth Review, the business school’s flagship publication. “Are You Ready for Personalized Pricing?” the headline asked. I wasn’t, so I started reading. The story looked at how online shopping, persistent data collection, and machine-learning algorithms could combine to generate the stuff of economist dreams: individual prices for each customer. It even recounted an experiment in 2015, where online employment website ZipRecruiter essentially outsourced its pricing strategy to two U of Chicago economists, Sanjog Misra and Jean-Pierre Dubé. More from David Dayen ZipRecruiter had previously charged businesses one fixed monthly price for its job-screening services. Misra and Dubé took the information ZipRecruiter asked prospective clients on an introductory registration screen about their location, industry, and employee bene

This article appears in the June 2024 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . Six years ago, I was at a conference at the University of Chicago, the intellectual heart of corporate-friendly capitalism, when my eyes found the cover of the Chicago Booth Review , the business school’s flagship publication. “ Are You Ready for Personalized Pricing? ” the headline asked. I wasn’t, so I started reading. The story looked at how online shopping, persistent data collection, and machine-learning algorithms could combine to generate the stuff of economist dreams: individual prices for e

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