Comments on Aplia Econ Blog: News for Economics Students: An iTunes Index for Exchange Rates

There's on average a 20% VAT (TVA) tax in Euro...

2009-10-18T04:50:15.387-07:00

There's on average a 20% VAT (TVA) tax in Europe built in the price. Big government needs its fuel!

That's interesting. You can also make a PPP index...

2008-03-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

That's interesting. You can also make a PPP index using the price of The Economist as the basket of goods. I blogged about it here:
Economist Index
And there's a graph of the data here:
Economist PPP Graph

I have become very annoyed at this price discrimin...

2007-02-02T17:08:00.000-08:00

I have become very annoyed at this price discrimination. I have thought of ways to arbitrage the songs across the internet, via a means of gifting the music across international borders. With such a variance in prices for a song, particularly between the US and the UK, there is possibly a lot of money to be made. At todays exchange rates, about $5 US difference per album. Thats half another album, ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!!
Compared with the British, Americans are buying 2 getting one free. I don't know what laws there are to stop people from arbitrage, but I think there should be laws to stop price discrimination. Someone please explain why I'm wrong.

Rob: But then, according to your theory, Apple has...

2007-01-23T23:35:00.000-08:00

Rob: But then, according to your theory, Apple has decided it must dominate the Canada even more, as the price there is the cheapest.

It would also be interesting to compare iTunes cost vs. Automobile cost. Well, to me.

I think that the relatively low prices in US and J...

2006-06-19T23:11:00.000-07:00

I think that the relatively low prices in US and Japan reflect the fact that there is more competition there. It is essential that Apple dominate the US market, therefore they are happy to keep profit margins low. I believe that they were relatively late to Japan, therefore, I suspect pricing reflects competitive conditions.