A dynamic approach to PES pricing and finance for interlinked ecosystem services: Watershed conservation and groundwater management

A theory of payment for ecosystem services (PES) pricing consistent with dynamic efficiency and sustainable income requires optimized shadow prices. Since ecosystem services are generally interdependent, this requires joint optimization across multiple resource stocks. We develop such a theory in the context of watershed conservation and groundwater extraction. The optimal program can be implemented with a decentralized system of ecosystem payments to private watershed landowners, financed by efficiency prices of groundwater set by a public utility. The theory is extended to cases where land is publicly owned, conservation instruments exhibit non-convexities on private land, or the size of a conservation project is exogenous. In these cases, conservation investment can be financed from benefit taxation of groundwater consumers. While volumetric conservation surcharges induce inefficient water use, a dynamic lump-sum tax finances investment without distorting incentives. Since the optimal level of conservation is generated as long as payments are correct at the margin, any surplus can be returned to consumers through appropriate block pricing. The present value gain in consumer surplus generated by the conservation-induced reduction in groundwater scarcity serves as a lower bound to the benefits of conservation without explicit measurement of other benefits such as recreation, biodiversity, and cultural values.     

A NOTE ON PRICING OF PRODUCT QUALITY FOR STATUS CONCERNS

The paper analyses the optimal pricing of the product quality scheme when concerns for relative standing exist among consumers. We demonstrate that if the proportion of high‐value consumers is over (respectively, under) 1/2 of the total consumers, a firm has an incentive to select a large (respectively, small) quality gap among products. Therefore, there exists a cut‐off level for status concerns, which eliminates quality differences, and the firm assigns the same quality to all the consumers. These results indicate that consumers’ qualities will reflect distortions at the top and bottom. Accordingly, the firm's profit depends on which consumer category is larger.     

Regulation and the provision of quality to heterogenous consumers: The case of prospective pricing of medical services

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of fixed-price regulation of services in a model in which consumers are heterogenous and a firm can endogenously quality discriminate. We consider two different scenarios: The first scenario is when the consumer is also the payer. The second scenario is when the payer (usually the government) is not the consumer. Our major result is that fixed-price regulation causes a distributional welfare loss. We show that it is not possible for fixed-price regulation to induce providers to supply all consumer types with the first-best quality even under perfect information, under either pricing scenario. We show that high and low demand types may receive more than their respective first-best qualities, less than their first-best qualities, or one type may receive more and the other type less depending on the level of the regulated price. It is always true that when consumers are payers, quality is higher for both types than when consumers are not the payers. In this paper, we motivate and discuss the results in terms of price regulation of hospitals where consumers are patients and patient types vary by severity of illness.     

Optimal pricing when rational consumers anticipate monitoring cost

This article considers a monopolistic firm’s optimal pricing decision over two periods among dynamic pricing, preannounced pricing and single pricing. In the models, consumers rationally determine whether to exhibit strategic waiting by weighing their costs against prospectively lower price. Our analysis yields three main results. First, single pricing that completely eliminates strategic waiting surely would be dominated by intertemporal pricing when facing rational consumers. Second, preannounced pricing may actually yield lower revenue than dynamic pricing when considering its effect on the reduction of consumer monitoring cost. Only when monitoring costs under dynamic pricing and under preannounced pricing are equal, is firm revenue weakly greater under preannounced pricing than under dynamic pricing. Third, in dynamic pricing equilibrium, increasing monitoring cost may increase firm revenue, consumer surplus and social welfare simultaneously.     

Bill Averaging Programs and Consumer Behavior: Theory and Evidence

This paper examines consumer behavior under "bill smoothing," a common pricing program for utility customers where monthly payments are equalized over a one year cycle.First, we offer a theoretical model and conclude that bill smoothing is beneficial to consumers, but leads to exaggerated swings in usage over the yearly cycle. Second, we provide statistical evidence on the determinants of voluntary participation in bill smoothing programs by consumers; financial distress and high usage are less important than generally supposed. Finally, empirical tests of our theoretical model find that (i) participation increases overall consumption; and (ii) bill smoothing leads to exaggerated usage peaks and troughs, a result that could have implications for load management programs and general energy conservation.     

An experimental study of price dispersion

We report an experiment examining a simple clearinghouse model that generates price dispersion. According to this model, price dispersion arises because of consumer heterogeneity—some consumers are “informed” and simply buy from the firm offering the lowest price, while the remaining consumers are “captive” and shop based on considerations other than price. In our experiment we observe substantial and persistent price dispersion. We find that, as predicted, an increase in the fraction of informed consumers leads to more competitive pricing for all consumers. We also find, as predicted, that when more firms enter the market, prices to informed consumers become more competitive while prices to captive customers become less competitive. Thus, our experiment provides strong support for the model's comparative static predictions about how changes in market structure affect pricing.     

TALKING,SEARCHING, AND PRICING*

I study the implications of interpersonal communication for incentives for consumers to acquire information and firms’ pricing behavior. Firms market a homogeneous product and choose its price; consumers acquire price information at some cost to themselves. Also, each consumer accesses the information acquired by a sample of other consumers—interpersonal communication. An exogenous increase in the level of interpersonal communication decreases the information that consumers acquire, and, when search costs are low, firms price less aggressively. In an extension, consumers may choose to invest in interpersonal communication at some cost. A decrease in the costs of interpersonal communication decreases firms’ competition.     

Advance-purchase discounts as a price discrimination device

In an intertemporal setting in which individual uncertainty is resolved over time, advance-purchase discounts can serve to price discriminate between consumers with different expected valuations for the product. Consumers with a high expected valuation purchase the product before learning their actual valuation at the offered advance-purchase discount; consumers with a low expected valuation will wait and purchase the good at the regular price only in the event where their realized valuation is high. We characterize the profit-maximizing pricing strategy of the monopolist. Furthermore, adopting a mechanism design perspective, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which advance-purchase discounts implement the monopolist's optimal mechanism.     

On the paradoxical case of a consumer-based environmental subsidy policy

We apply an environmentally differentiated duopoly model to the analysis of environmental policy involving consumer subsidies based on the emission levels of the products consumers purchase. More specifically, we consider the environmental and welfare effects of subsidizing consumers who purchase environmentally friendly goods in the case of a partially covered market with a Cournot duopoly. We show that, paradoxically, the subsidy policy degrades the environment, and that the optimal policy depends on the degree of marginal social valuation of environmental damage. That is, if the marginal social valuation of environmental damage is larger than a certain value, a consumer-based environmental subsidy policy is not socially optimal.     

Optimal Tax Policy under Environmental Quality Competition

This paper studies the socially optimal emission and commodity tax policy when consumers are willing to pay a price-premium for environmentally friendlier variants of a commodity vertically differentiated in environmental quality. The first-best levels of quality can be obtained by a combination of a uniform ad valorem tax and an emission tax (or a subsidy for buying green products). The first-best emission tax is higher than the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. Regardless of environmentally conscious consumers, if only one instrument is available, the second-best emission tax is equal to the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. A uniform ad valorem tax increases welfare only if the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality is low enough.     

Monopoly pricing when consumers are antagonized by unexpected price increases: a “cover version” of the Heidhues–K?szegi–Rabin model

This paper reformulates and simplifies a recent model by Heidhues and K?szegi (The impact of consumer loss aversion on pricing, Mimeo, 2005), which in turn is based on a behavioral model due to K?szegi and Rabin (Q J Econ 121:1133?C1166, 2006). The model analyzes optimal pricing when consumers are loss averse in the sense that an unexpected price hike lowers their willingness to pay. The main message of the Heidhues?CK?szegi model, namely that this form of consumer loss aversion leads to rigid price responses to cost fluctuations, carries over. I demonstrate the usefulness of this ??cover version?? of the Heidhues?CK?szegi-Rabin model by obtaining new results: (1) loss aversion lowers expected prices; (2) the firm??s incentive to adopt a rigid pricing strategy is stronger when fluctuations are in demand rather than in costs.     

Single Object Auctions With Externalities: A Tractable Model

We consider the single object auction model with allocative externalities in a private valuation and quasi‐linear setting. We model externalities by assuming that every agent has a private valuation (for the object) and a strict ranking of other agents. The utility for an agent when another agent receives the object is the product of his own valuation and a real number that depends on the rank of this agent in his ranking. When the only private information is the valuation of the agents, we characterise the implementable allocation rules and use these to derive the optimal auction. The optimal auction collects payments from agents who do not receive the object.     

Behaviour-based price discrimination with cross-group externalities

Two platforms compete for heterogeneous firms and consumers. Platforms are allowed to discriminate prices on the consumers’ side according to their past purchase behaviour. The findings of the paper depend on two dimensions: the relative cross-side externalities and the consumer discounting relative to platform discounting. Price competition is strengthened in the poaching phase compared to the case where a uniform price is charged in both sides, whereas the early price competition is relaxed if firms exhibit weaker externalities than consumers and if the latter discount sufficiently the future. The overall effect on inter-temporal profits of platforms is negative, but consumers might be harmed by BBPD when they discount sufficiently the future. Finally, depending on consumers’ discounting, total welfare may increase or decrease going from the uniform pricing to the discriminatory pricing.     

Optimal taxation with positional considerations

This paper analyzes the optimal commodity tax policy, in a generalized vertical differentiation model in which consumers have positional considerations. Consumers enjoy having a product which is better than that owned by others, and feel envy when others own a better product than them. We examine the impact of these positional considerations on the optimal tax and welfare when a monopoly produces two variants of such good. The standard result that the government should subsidize the product, can be reversed in our setting. In the presence of positional concerns, the optimal tax rate can be positive. Furthermore, the positional effects determine the level of the tax pass-through on prices. Finally, the tax levied on the high-quality variant affects the price of the low-quality variant and vice versa.     

公共品需求偏好显示机制：一个理论回顾

公共品的需求偏好显示是公共经济学理论中的一个难题。长期以来,经济学家一直试图建立有效的公共品需求偏好显示机制,以实现公共品的最优供给。文章从理论发展的视角对投票机制、价格拍卖机制、特征价格机制和或有估价机制这几种主要偏好显示机制进行了回顾和总结,直到今天,这些机制仍然是经济学家们继续探索的领域。     

Consumer flexibility,data quality and location choice

We analyze firms’ location choices in a Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity, along addresses and transport cost parameters (flexibility). Firms can price discriminate based on perfect data on consumer addresses and (possibly) imperfect data on consumer flexibility. We show that firms’ location choices depend on how strongly consumers differ in flexibility. Precisely, when consumers are relatively homogeneous, equilibrium locations are socially optimal regardless of the quality of customer flexibility data. However, when consumers are relatively differentiated, firms make socially optimal location choices only when customer flexibility data becomes perfect. These results are driven by the optimal strategy of a firm on its turf, monopolization or market-sharing, which in turn depends on consumer heterogeneity in flexibility. Our analysis is motivated by the availability of customer data, which allows firms to practice third-degree price discrimination based on both consumer characteristics relevant in spatial competition, addresses and transport cost parameters.     

Analysing remanufacturing decisions of supply chain members in uncertainty of consumer preferences

This article formulates a gaming model of the closed-loop supply chain with manufacturers (as the leader), sellers and consumers where consumers may or may not be willing to pay remunerative price for remanufactured products vis-à-vis new products. In the model, manufacturers produce new as well as remanufactured products, whereas sellers distribute them. In stable circumstances, this article presents the functional formula of the optimal manufacturing pricing decisions. The results show that when the cost of new products is significantly lower than that of remanufactured ones, manufacturers choose to produce new products only. When the difference between cost of new and remanufactured products is moderate, manufacturers tend to produce both new and remanufactured products, and in some regions, production of new and remanufactured products is proportional to each other. When the difference between cost of new and remanufactured products is enormous, their production and sale tend to stop. Also, this article analyses the effects of varying cost of new and remanufactured products and the recycling rate on pricing decisions of supply chain members. This article contributes to the management of manufacturers’ and sellers’ remanufacturing decisions and also provides advice on how governments can guide consumer preferences.     

Why equity cannot be separated from efficiency: the welfare economics of progressive social pricing

Applied neoclassical microeconomists maintain that when profits are constrained, and average costs are higher than marginal costs, Ramsey “inverse elasticity” pricing optimizes static consumer welfare. However, when weighted, instead of unweighted, consumer surplus aggregation is used, the Ramsey pricing rule becomes a “progressive social pricing rule,” which suggests that under plausible conditions “direct-elasticity” rather than “inverse-elasticity” pricing is consumer welfare optimal.     

Sequential Screening

We study price discrimination where consumers know at the time of contracting only the distribution of their valuations but subsequently learn their actual valuations. Consumers are sequentially screened, as in a menu of refund contracts. Initial valuation uncertainty can differ in terms of first-order stochastic dominance or mean-preserving-spread. In both cases, optimal mechanisms depend on informativeness of consumers' initial knowledge about their valuations, not on uncertainty that affects all consumers. It can be optimal to "subsidize" consumers with smaller valuation uncertainty through low refund to reduce the rent to those who face greater uncertainty and purchase more "flexible" contracts.     

A proposal for social pricing of water supply in Côte d'Ivoire

We consider the design of a nonlinear social tariff for residential water in Côte d'Ivoire, which is a case of a monopolistic private operator supplying a population of heterogeneous consumers. The proposed optimal tariff includes an initial “social” block with a low unit price, and higher consumption blocks with a monopoly pricing rule. This optimal nonlinear tariff is calibrated using econometric estimates of a panel-data residential water demand equation. Welfare changes associated with moving from the actual tariff to approximations of the optimal pricing system are computed under different tariff scenarios. We find that gains in consumer welfare would outweigh losses in producer surplus in a majority of Ivorian local communities.