In economics, a price book is a book in which the normal prices of an item are listed for all suppliers. This allows one to determine the lowest price possible.
If a group of suppliers adhere to a particular price book, in other words, they set the prices of the price book artificially higher than the market clearing price, then they are "fixing the price" of that item. This is illegal in most countries and is often found in oligopolies (industries with a few competitors (2-8), but not enough to make it a perfect market).
Famous quotes containing the words price and/or book:
“By all those, who are not much acquainted with him, he was considered infinitely below his level; he put no price upon himself, and consequently went at an undervalue; for the world is complaisant or dupe enough, to give every man the price he sets upon himself, provided it be not insolently and overbearingly demanded. It turns upon the manner of asking.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)