Lucky Prices = Higher Prices

In China, where superstitions about numbers are common, retailers make sure that the first two nonzero digits in product prices include lucky numbers, such as 8, and don’t include unlucky numbers, such as 4. In the process, they usually raise the price, says Zili Yang, of SUNY Binghamton. By calculating what prices would be if the initial digits followed a uniform distribution and comparing those figures with actual prices, Yang found that the manipulations inflate retailers’ revenues by as much as 4.2% a year—a total increase that amounts to more than 1% of China’s GDP.