About The Pricing Connection

The Pricing Connection is presented by the Center for Pricing at the Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester. Our goal is to connect pricing theory with pricing practice and to provide a forum for discussing pricing issues that are both relevant to pricing practitioners and interesting to the curious pricing minds of the future. Each article on The Pricing Connection is written by a current or former M.B.A. student at the Simon School based on that student’s interview of a pricing expert. So pull up a chair and join the discussion as we delve into the pricing issues facing organizations today.

About The University of Rochester

The University of Rochester (www.rochester.edu) is one of the nation’s leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Memorial Art Gallery.

About The Simon Graduate School of Business

The Simon School prides itself as the place Where Thinkers Become Leaders™ and is currently ranked among the leading graduate business schools in the world in rankings published by the popular press, including BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Forbes. For example, the Financial Times recently rated the School 2nd in the world for finance and 5th in the world for managerial economics. More information about the Simon School is available on the World Wide Web at www.simon.rochester.edu.

About The Center for Pricing

The Center for Pricing is part of the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. Its primary mission is to serve as a center of excellence for research and education in pricing and to provide a platform for meaningful interaction between business executives, educators, and researchers in this high-demand field.

The Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester is a world leader in pricing education and the first to offer M.B.A. students a comprehensive pricing track. For more information about  the Center for Pricing, please visit our website.

Director: Greg Shaffer

Greg Shaffer is the Wesray Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Economics and Management and of Marketing, at the Simon Graduate School of Business.

Professor Shaffer teaches pricing policies to full-time and part-time M.B.A. students. He has been named to the Teaching Honor Roll numerous times and was awarded the Superior Teaching Award from the M.B.A. classes of 2001 and 2004. Shaffer’s research employs game-theoretic methods to examine issues in pricing policies, antitrust and regulation, distribution channels, vertical restraints, principal-agent theory, and oligopoly models of strategic competition. He has received research grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council (U.S.A.) and the Social Research Council (U.K.).

Shaffer is an area editor of Marketing Science, a co-editor of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and an associate editor of the Journal of Economics and Business. He has been involved in numerous consulting projects and antitrust cases in the U.S. and abroad related to issues on pricing and vertical relations among firms, and he has served as a visiting scholar in the two U.S. government antitrust agencies: the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau of Economics at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Shaffer participated in the writing of the 2001 Federal Trade Commission’s report on slotting allowances (payments for retail shelf space), and he has twice given invited testimony on their competitive effects, serving on a three-member panel investigating this practice at the Hearings on Global and Innovation Based Competition (1995) and again at the Federal Trade Commission’s sponsored workshop on slotting allowances (2000).

Shaffer earned a B.A. (high honors) in Economics and Mathematics from Swarthmore College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

Director: Scott Newman

Scott Newman is the Director for the Center for Pricing and a lecturer in the undergraduate program at the Simon Graduate School of Business.

Prior to pursuing graduate studies at the University of Rochester, Mr Newman worked in corporate finance in Brisbane, Australia. He specialized in business valuations, particularly the preparation of fairness opinions for mergers and acquisitions, capital raising prospectuses and related party transactions. Newman also advised clients on mergers and acquisitions, and taxation.

Newman earned a Bachelor of Commerce (First Class Honours) in Finance from the University of Queensland, and an M.B.A. and an M.S. in Applied Economics from the University of Rochester.

In addition, Newman is the editor of The Pricing Connection. For more information, please contact him by email or by phone, +1 (585) 275-5105.

Special Thanks

The Center for Pricing would like to thank the Pricing and Profitability Management Practice at Deloitte for providing pricing experts for our students and alumni to interview. Particular thanks must go to Julie Meehan and Maggie Laird for their assistance in the planning and execution of the interviews and this blog.