> **Possible Duplicate:**  
> [The origin of “99 cents”](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2359/the-origin-of-99-cents)  

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On Wikipedia, the article for [psychological pricing][1] (ending prices in -99 or similar) gives the following suggestion for why it is done, as opposed to the psychological aspect behind it.

> Others have suggested that fractional
> pricing was first adopted as a control
> on employee theft. For cash
> transactions with a round price, there
> is a chance that a dishonest cashier
> will pocket the bill rather than
> record the sale. For cash transactions
> with an odd price, the cashier must
> make change for the customer. This
> generally means opening the cash
> register which creates a record of the
> sale in the register and reduces the
> risk of the cashier stealing from the
> store owner.

This is not cited or sourced, so I wonder if any studies have been performed on this? Is it actually harder to steal from the store with odd prices?

  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing