Random Price Discrimination

When a monopolist randomly sorts customers, price discrimination “concavifies” the revenue function of the firm, so that it may be optimal for a monopolist to divide customers into groups that have the same demand function and charge them different prices. It is impossible to rule out this type of result whenever the revenue function is somewhere convex in the “economically relevant” set of quantities, because there always exists a non-decreasing cost function that leads to that conclusion. It is also impossible to rule out the case where, with respect to monopoly, the firm raises or lowers price to all classes and, accordingly, the case where the social welfare decreases or increases. Received December 13, 2001; revised version received June 3, 2002 Published online: February 17, 2003 I am indebted to Carlo Beretta, Giuseppe Colangelo, Umberto Galmarini, Guido Merzoni, Gerd Weinrich and especially to Carla Peri for helpful discussions and comments. I have also benefited from insightful suggestions of three anonymous referees. Finally, I wish to thank participants to seminars at the Catholic University of Milan and University of Bologna. The usual disclaimer applies. Funds from MIUR are gratefully acknowledged.     

Teaching Third-Degree Price Discrimination

Abstract: Third-degree price discrimination is taught in almost every intermediate microeconomics class. The theory, geometry, and the algebra behind the concept are simple, and the phenomenon is commonly associated with the sale of many of the goods and services used frequently by students. Classroom discussion is usually vibrant as students can relate their experiences of being on the receiving end of third-degree price discrimination, usually to their advantage. However, the precision of the language used in the exposition of the theory in textbooks is generally less precise than one would hope for, leading students to confuse slope and elasticity. The authors ask textbook writers to provide greater precision in their explanation of why differing elasticities are associated with the prices paid by two (or more) distinct groups of buyers facing third-degree price discrimination.     

企业合约的价格解释

以科期(Coase)为代表的主流企业理论家认为：在企业内是通过命令(或权威)而不是价格来配置资源的。本文通过探析企业内权威和价格的作用发现：在企业内，权威与价格并不具有排它性，实际上，权威是价格基础上的权威，价格因素其实是企业合约的内生变量，市场里的企业其实是一个随价格变化的动态合约序列，确切地讲，它是一个主要由人力资本价格变化所决定的动态合约序列。     

价格歧视和网络营销

本文运用经济学理论对价格歧视的种类、必要条件和依据进行了分析 ,并在此基础上论证了网络营销中也能对消费者实行价格歧视。最后阐述了网络营销中的二部定价方法。     

价格歧视理论中的若干问题

价格歧视理论在传播和应用中存在着含糊不清甚至是谬误的问题,文中重新界定了价格歧视的概念,规范了实施价格歧视的前提条件,对价格歧视中的社会利问题进行了分析,同时指出了价格歧视理论中的两个常见错误。     

垄断厂商与中间商的分销价格博弈

完全信息条件下,在各自领域处于垄断地位的厂商和中间商就分销价格和促销费用博弈时会达到多个纳什均衡,即"高分销价格,低促销费用"或"低分销价格,高促销费用"。若从分销价格和促销费用服从连续分布的基础上进行分析,博弈双方会取得惟一的纳什均衡解。这一结果尽管是在假设条件下的静态均衡,但却同受到各种条件制约的现实博弈结果相类似。     

网络外部性与基于行为的区别定价

近年来,基于行为的区别定价成为区别定价领域研究的热点,但是这方面的文献却鲜有涉及到市场中存在着网络外部性的情形。在理性预期的假设下,本文通过一个两阶段双寡头博弈模型分析了网络外部性与基于行为的区别定价对子博弈精炼纳什均衡的影响。在成熟市场上,网络外部性会对具有不同初始市场份额的厂商产生不同影响;在新兴市场上,无论厂商采取何种定价策略,网络外部性都会加剧市场上的竞争,导致厂商利润下降。与统一定价下的子博弈精炼纳什均衡相比,基于行为的区别定价会加剧竞争从而导致厂商利润的下降,但是会造成较多社会福利的无谓损失。     

Two Models of Intertemporal Price Discrimination

Received December 22, 2000; revised version received August 31, 2001     

Price Discrimination in Public Healthcare

Could a public healthcare system use price discrimination—paying medical service providers different fees, depending on the service provider's quality—lead to improvements in social welfare? We show that differentiating medical fees by quality increases social welfare relative to uniform pricing (i.e. quality‐invariant fee schedules) whenever hospitals and doctors have private information about their own ability. We also show that by moving from uniform to differentiated medical fees, the public healthcare system can effectively incentivise good doctors and hospitals (i.e. low‐cost‐types) to provide even higher levels of quality than they would under complete information. In the socially optimal quality‐differentiated medical fee system, low‐cost‐type medical‐service providers enjoy a rent due to their informational advantage. Informational rent is socially beneficial because it gives service providers a strong incentive to invest in the extra training required to deliver high‐quality services at low cost, providing yet another efficiency gain from quality‐differentiated medical fees.     

Psychological Oil Price Barrier and Firm Returns

In this paper, we investigate the psychological barrier effect induced by the oil price on firm returns when the oil price reaches US$100 or more per barrel. We find evidence of the negative effect of the US$100 oil price barrier for: (a) the entire sample of 1559 firms listed on the American stock exchanges; (b) both foreign and domestic firms, with domestic firms significantly more affected; (c) the 10 different sizes of firms, with the smaller firms less affected compared to the larger firms; and (d) 17 sectors of firms, with firms in the utilities, mining, and administration sectors being the least affected.     

Price Discrimination with Private and Imperfect Information

In this paper, I investigate the competitive and welfare effects of the improvements in information accuracy in markets where firms can price discriminate after observing a private and noisy signal about a consumer's brand preference. I show that when firms believe that consumers have a brand preference for them, then they charge more to these consumers, and this price has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with the signal's accuracy. In contrast, the price charged after a disloyal signal has been observed falls as the signal's accuracy rises. While industry profit and overall welfare fall monotonically when price discrimination is based on increasingly more accurate information, the reverse happens to consumer surplus.     

价格歧视战略与福利效应分析

在完全竞争市场条件下 ,竞争均衡可实现帕累托最优效率。垄断市场一般很难提供价格等于边际成本的产量水平 ,其产量与价格选择对社会来说不是最优的。垄断厂商以内生范畴和外生范畴为基础对消费者进行分类 ,使得价格歧视成为一种可行战略。由于定价策略存在差异 ,不同类型的价格歧视便具有不同的福利效应。     

Export Price Discrimination in Europe and Exchange Rates

The paper studies pricing-to-market behavior on a wide range of disaggregated European Union exports to OECD countries. The sample allows better identification of products for which such behavior is pervasive. The results suggest that the degree of markup adjustment in response to exchange rate changes is similar across destination markets. The evidence of pricing-to-market across source countries ranges from 40% (Netherlands) to 63% (Germany) of the products in the sample, except for the United Kingdom, where there is remarkably little evidence of it. However, formal comparisons across source countries by product do not usually reveal differences in behavior.     

价格歧视下的不可再生资源的开采问题研究

自Hotelling开始,不可再生资源开采问题引起了经济学家们的注意,在此过程中,产业组织理论被应用于不可再生资源的研究.文章分析了价格歧视对不可再生资源开采的影响,结果发现,当资源的垄断开采者面向多个市场时,价格歧视因素可能使资源开采偏离最优路径.     

Third-Degree Price Discrimination in the Presence of Subsidies

Abstract. According to a classical result, a move from uniform pricing to third-degree price discrimination only improves welfare if total output increases. In this paper I show that the classical result fails in the presence of subsidies. This finding appears to be relevant for the pharmaceutical sector where a consumer pays a fraction of the actual drug price due to health insurance coverage.     

分行业能源差别定价促进节能模型研究

促进节能减排是当前建设环境友好型社会以及促进经济又快又好发展的重要措施。如何完成"十一五"规划提出的节能减排的两个约束性指标是亟待解决的重大课题。笔者根据能源价格由市场调节与政府调控相结合形成的原则,根据不同行业节能情况的差异性,对不同行业能源消费价格进行差别定价,建立了分行业能源差别定价促进节能模型,以期对政府制定节能减排政策具有一定的借鉴意义。     

市场经济条件下的“价格大战”辨析

价格大战是市场竞争条件下的必然产物。本文以上海“明牌银楼”13家黄金饰品企业联合限价为案例,研究表明,政府应当制裁企业为避免价格大战而采取的价格串通行为,进而探讨了价格竞争中行业协会的功能定位问题。