Price Discrimination and Efficient Distribution

This paper focuses on third‐degree price discrimination by an upstream firm with some degree of monopoly power. Downstream firms fall into two categories: efficient and inefficient, according to their relative costs of transforming a unit of the upstream good into a unit of final product. Under ordinary static conditions, price discrimination favors the inefficient firms, which have more elastic demands. We consider, however, the possibility that discrimination in the opposite direction can alter the downstream market structure toward greater efficiency. Discriminatory pricing, then, involves charging a higher price to the less efficient firms. Such pricing is shown to be both potentially profitable for the upstream firm and welfare improving as average consumer prices fall.     

Diagrammatic Approach to Capacity-Constrained Price Discrimination

This paper presents a diagrammatic solution to the firm's profit-maximizing price discrimination problem in the face of capacity constraints. Airlines, hotels, and other firms practice yield management, allocating fixed capacity to customer groups paying different prices. In these cases, the firm's short-run problem is not a decision about production levels, but it is one of allocating a fixed number of output units among customers. Our diagram shows that the conditions for profit-maximizing price discrimination are very different under these circumstances than in the standard model in which the firm is not constrained by capacity.     

房价何时价值回归

今年以来，我国房市总体回升迹象明显，自2月份后，全国大中城市的房价已连续2个月环比上涨，增幅由3月的0．2％扩大至4月的0．4％。4月全国商品房销售面积17625万平方米，同比增长17．5％。1至4月，商品房销售额7996亿元，同比增长35．4％，其中，住宅销售额增长38．6％，而1至3月的销售额同比增长幅度只有8．2％，说明4月楼市成交量反弹力度非常大。随着楼市成交量增价升，     

Teaching Price Discrimination: Some Clarification

This paper describes some common pitfalls in the teaching of price discrimination. The paper then presents some clarification of these issues and makes suggestions for teaching price discrimination to students in Principles and Intermediate Microeconomics classes.     

Consequences of Price Discrimination in Health Care

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Third-Degree Price Discrimination: Apology Not Necessary

Applied work in price discrimination often treats demand curves among multiple market segments as algebraically additive. Yet the welfare effects of multi-market (third degree) price discrimination depend on how the demand segments are added. Treating demands as geometrically additive yields the well known result that discrimination absent an increase in production diminishes Marshallian surplus. But if demands are treated as algebraically additive then discrimination increases welfare over uniform pricing. Quantity is identical in the three cases, so the effect is not due to market opening. Nor is the effect due to scale economies since marginal cost is assumed constant. Profit is always greater under discrimination, so the effect is due to distributional changes in consumer surplus. The model is restricted to linear demands and constant marginal cost but can be generalized for future work and policy analysis.     

当京剧恋上交响乐

让交响乐为京剧配乐,这种新兴的艺术形式,引起了人们的关注和议论。赞同者表示,有市场便是硬道理,反对者则认为,它毁了传统艺术……当京剧恋上交响乐,成否？败否？人人都有不同观点。     

软件产品的特点及价格形成机制探讨

由于软件产品零边际成本、收益递增、共享性等特点 ,使其在价格形成机制上不同于其它产品。软件可分为专用软件和通用软件。专用软件的价格仍以成本为基础 ,但通用软件的价格与成本之间已经没有直接的联系。通用软件的价格取决于需求弹性、软件开发商的市场策略和预期利润率。     

Price Discrimination in the Subscription Market for Economics Journals

We examine what factors affect the degree of price discrimination for an academic journal by analyzing data on 190 of the 208 economics journals indexed in the 2008 edition of Journal Citation Reports. We find that (i) the library‐to‐individual price ratio of a for‐profit journal is 37% higher than that of a comparable nonprofit journal because the price premium of a for‐profit journal in the library market is disproportionately larger than that in the individual market, (ii) journals with higher citations per page or impact factor are more price discriminatory, and (iii) Elsevier and Wiley‐Blackwell practice the highest degree of price discrimination of all publishers.     

Endogenous Price Leadership and the Strategic Acquisition of Information

We model a differentiated Bertrand duopoly in which a firm's earlier knowledge of market demand than its competitor results in endogenous price leadership with the information advantaged firm leading. In such a setting with second‐mover advantage, we then study the firms’ incentives to acquire information and analyze an information acquisition game. Both (i) neither firm acquiring information and (ii) one firm acquiring information can arise as subgame perfect equilibrium, but both firms acquiring information is never an equilibrium outcome, even if information is free. Information may have a negative value if it causes a change in the timing of price competition.     

Third-Degree Price Discrimination: Apology not Necessary _ Comment

In this comment, we note that the analysis in Lopez and Molina (2010) is subject to a number of mistakes and various unjustifiable assumptions.     

Spatial Price Discrimination and Merger: The N-Firm Case

The consequences of merger are analyzed in an N-firm model of spatial price discrimination. The merger occurs with known probability after location decisions have been made. The possibility of merger alters locations, generates inefficiency, and increases the profit of the merging firms. In the case of corner mergers, but never in the case of interior mergers, the possibility of merger may also reduce the profit of the excluded firms.     

忘了价格，多想点别的

百货公司衰落了，那么零售商能从中学到什么呢。     

When Identifying Contributors is Costly: An Experiment on Public Goods

Studies show that identifying contributors increases contributions to public goods. In practice, viewing identifiable information is costly, which may discourage people from accessing it. We design a public goods experiment in which participants can pay to view information about identities and contributions of group members. We compare this to a treatment in which there is no identifiable information, and a treatment in which all contributors are identified. Our main findings are that: (i) contributions in the treatment with costly information are as high as those in the treatment with free information, (ii) participants rarely choose to view the information, and (iii) being a high contributor is correlated with choosing to view information about others.     

石油价格冲击、内生技术进步与日本经济增长

本研究利用1970-2006年数据检验了石油价格冲击时日本经济增长的短期与长期效应,发现日本的实际GDP、原油和成品油进口量、原油实际价格以及日元对美元名义汇率之间存在协整关系;基于误差修正模型的Granger(格兰杰)非因果关系检验显示,原油实际价格波动是日本经济增长的Granger原因,但其短期效应为负而长期效应则为正:原油与成品油进口量对日本经济有着的长期影响也方向各异.经验性证据表明,日本的经济增长存在着成本推动的内生技术进步机制.     

分析三级价格歧视的福利效应图解法

本文运用图解分析法来考察三级价格歧视对福利的影响，包括对Varian（1985）研究结论的检验。本文给出了实施价格歧视引起福利提高的充分必要条件，对这方面的管理和经济学文献具有教学法方面的价值。     

价格歧视原理在国际原油贸易中的应用

随着中国石油消费的快速增长,从中东进口的原油量逐年增加,亚洲溢价对中国经济的影响也越来越大。中东原油的亚洲溢价现象的实质是价格歧视。本文运用价格歧视理论对亚洲溢价问题进行了深入分析,发现亚洲对中东原油的需求价格弹性较小,中东国家通过目的地限制和禁止转售条款实现市场的有效分割,从而可以通过价格歧视来实现垄断利润。