数字产品定价问题初探

作为网络经济条件下一种新的产品形式,数字产品的定价不同于传统实物产品,特殊的成本结构使其无法以边际成本定价,需要更多的考虑需求因素。数字产品主要有垄断竞争和寡头垄断两种可持续的市场结构,其对应的典型定价形式分别为差别化定价和限制性定价,在技术创新力量的作用下,数字产品的市场结构由垄断竞争向寡头垄断再依次向新的垄断竞争转换。     

数字产品及其定价策略

数字产品具有与传统产品不同的物理和经济特征，这就决定数字产品不适合采用边际成本定价策略，而更适合采用市场价值定价策略，主要包括个性化定价策略、群体定价策略、版本划分策略、转换成本与锁定策略。     

数字产品定价新论

传统经济学难以解释网络经济下供给和需求曲线不复存在的原因;数字产品供应商实施若干定价方案,并形成市场均衡。这种经济行为是否会出现类似传统垄断行业中,以限制供给来保留富余生产能力,以闲置社会资源为代价来实现自身的利润最大化的情况?文章从数字产品的公共产品特性角度出发,对数字产品的定价、竞争策略作出数理分析。     

公共物品定价模式研究

公共产品定价模式,一般有边际成本法和平均成本法两种。边际成本定价法的原则是价格等于边际成本,平均成本定价的原则是价格等于平均成本。公共物品定价,究竟是按边际成本定价法,还是按平均成本定价,存在不同的主张。在对各种模式进行比较的基础上得出结论：在我国现阶段供给相对不足情况下,二部定价法是较为适宜的定价模式。     

自然资源定价方法研究

为纠正自然资源价格的市场失灵和政策失灵 ,文章提出应以自然资源利用的边际社会成本对自然资源进行定价 ,以促进资源和环境的持续利用     

边际成本定价悖论、国有企业重组及政府管制

通过引入收益递增(固定成本)分析边际成本定价悖论及市场神话的破灭,反思自由放任和私有化政策的局限性,为政府管制提供理论依据。由于经济转型时期我国大型国有企业是资本密集型的,固定资本和沉淀成本显著,所以在市场竞争中会因边际成本定价而遭受亏损,甚至破产,很容易造成市场失灵。因此,从沉淀成本角度提出治理市场失灵的政策处方,在于有效地避免大型国有企业按照边际成本定价,加大国有企业重组力度,补偿投资成本,同时又要避免出现完全垄断,理性解决市场竞争和政府管制问题,对于完善中国特色社会主义市场经济体制具有重大理论与现实意义。     

水务融资定价策略的思考

本文从水务融资的特点入手,对我国水务融资做了一个概括性的整体介绍。分析在市场条件下,从经济利润定价、边际成本定价和平均成本定价三种模式中做出选择,为水产品定价。为实现融资者、投资者双方的利益均衡,提出水务融资定价策略的建议．     

网络效应、动态定价与电脑软件的最佳升级时机

电脑软件存在的网络效应使得厂商定价策略发生一定的变化。本文运用动态最优化理论,分析电脑软件厂商的定价策略和最优更版时机。发现厂商通常会以先低于边际成本的价格定价,然后逐渐提高软件的价格,与不具有网络效应的产品的边际成本定价有一定差异;厂商在升级旧版软件时,存在最佳时机,过早或者过迟推出新版软件都将导致利润损失。     

信息产品多重价格定价模型研究

信息产品生产所具有的高固定成本和低边际成本特点使信息产品定价遇到了难题，它不适用于MR=MC=P的传统定价规则，在采用单一垄断价格时又会造成净损失。而信息产品的多重价格定价模型正可以改善净损失，提高社会效率，它实质上是一种“有利”的价格歧视。信息产品的生产可以通过版本差异化策略形成顾客对产品价值认知的差异化，从而实现信息产品的多重价格。     

城市再生水的边际机会成本定价方法研究

分析了边际机会成本定价法的特点,指出了该方法应用于城市再生水定价时的作用,给出了边际机会成本定价的一般公式.通过分析得出再生水边际成本定价时需用平均增量成本代替边际机会成本,并给出了平均增量成本的计算公式.最后提出了城市再生水边际机会成本定价的具体步骤.采用边际机会成本定价法可使再生水生产企业获得足够的收入去扩容并实现可持续发展,还有可能实现资源的高效分配,因此可作为判断再生水价格是否合理的一个主要依据.     

Welfare-optimal pricing and capacity selection under an ex ante maximum demand charge

This paper deals with the simultaneous determination of welfare-optimal pricing and investment rules under a multi-period ex ante maximum demand charge by allowing the possibility of purchasing electricity from third party generators at some cost when excess demand occurs. I show that at the optimal size of capacity, expected short-run marginal shortage cost and long-run marginal capacity cost should be equal. The optimal maximum demand tariff does not entail marginal cost pricing. In general, it is shown that maximum demand charges are welfare superior to marginal cost pricing when tariffs must be set ex ante, before demand is known.     

Utility Regulation and Risk Allocation: The Roles of Marginal Cost Pricing and Futures Markets

The effects on consumer welfare of requiring a utility facing cost or demand risk to use either a fixed retail price or marginal cost pricing are assessed. With marginal cost pricing and cost volatility an efficient futures market allows consumer welfare to be at least as high in every state as with the fixed price. With demand risk marginal cost pricing can benefit the consumer in every state without harming the firm if the profit difference is transferred to the consumer. A futures market can act as a partial replacement for the transfer.     

Social welfare loss due to second-best pricing: an application to the Portuguese telecommunications

The telecommunications industry is usually characterized by low marginal costs and significant fixed costs which are the conditions for the inefficiency of marginal cost pricing. In such cases theory postulates that optimal pricing is obtained by maximizing welfare subject to a restriction of viability of the firm: the second-best pricing scheme. The possible welfare losses due to second-best pricing varies according to the values of marginal costs, prices and demand elasticities. This paper analyses to what extent the second-best pricing has been achieved in the Portuguese telecommunications firm CTT, over the period 1950#150;1984 as well as the magnitude of the price-cost margins and welfare losses created. We obtained empirical evidence of the presence of economies of scale, a welfare loss estimate of 1% of the telecommunications receipts and a result that price was 40% greater than marginal cost. We concluded that price regulation and public ownership of the firm did not seriously affect social welfare over the sample period (it should be noted that it is the non-digital and fixedwire infrastructure period). Therefore, it is important to study the impact of new digital and non-wire technologies and new services provided in the old regulatory scenery.     

Estimating the economic costs of electricity deficit using input–output analysis: the case of Brazil

The objective of this article is to present a methodology to estimate the marginal cost of electric energy deficit in the long-term using input–output (I–O) analysis. We obtain a deficit marginal cost (DMC) curve that is not limited to a small number of levels, such as the curve used currently in Brazil, which is limited to four levels. The marginal cost of deficit is an important exogenous parameter used in the model’s chain to calculate the operation’s marginal cost and short-term market pricing. The electric energy deficit is a temporary lack of continuity in meeting demand, which is usually predictable and involves prior notice to the consumer. The cause of this deficit may be a lack of investment and/or low water inflows that impact the production of hydroelectric power plants. In this study, the marginal cost of the deficit is obtained from restrictions on the provision of electricity for productive sectors and by calculating the corresponding impact on the gross domestic product. The proposed methodology can be used with data from the I–O matrix of any country to estimate its marginal cost of electric energy deficit.     

不确定情形下的市场定价机制:基于心理-权力框架对新古典价格理论的审视

现实市场存在严重的不确定性,供给成本、消费效用以及质量信号等都是价格的函数,从而也就无法基于供求曲线交叉来获得均衡价格.因此,在不确定的现实市场中,人们往往需要借助一定的锚定值来预测产品和劳务的价格并促成契约和交易.同时,不同产品的价格锚定值往往依赖于基于一定规则所形成的等级序列,进而形成锦标赛制的市场定价体系,即不同产品的价格水平和不同劳务的工资水平往往依赖于其所属等级.进而,锦标赛制定价所遵循的不是生产成本原则或劳动投入原则,也不是客观功用原则或产出贡献原则,从而往往既不公平也无效率.锦标赛制定价体系之所以流行,根本原因在于市场经济中的权力结构是不对称的;尤其是,权力碎片化发展使得极少数强势者拥有了市场定价的权力,而定价原则是基于特定主权者的利益最大化和少数富人的效用最大化.正是基于锚定效应和权力分析框架的结合,我们才可以揭示出不确定市场中统一的锦标赛制定价体系及其嵌入的利益导向.显然,这将有助于我们深入审视新古典经济学价格理论,识别现实市场中的厂商定价策略,更好地解释各种市场行为和竞争形态,同时有助于我们更深刻地洞识市场机制的内在缺陷,进而为市场监管和收入分配等公共政策提供依据和方向.     

TESTING MODELS OF DIFFERENTIATED PRODUCTS MARKETS: CONSOLIDATION IN THE CABLE TV INDUSTRY

Research on differentiated products markets often uses structural demand/supply models to identify firms' marginal costs as product‐level cost data are unavailable. Using unique demand and cost data from cable TV, I evaluate a differentiated products model's ability to identify marginal costs. I find firms systematically price below profit‐maximizing levels, leading to biases in the model's marginal cost estimates. I study the implications for merger simulations and find that these biases compromise estimates of merger‐related cost efficiencies, yet do not prevent these models from generating useful predictions of the price and nonprice effects of mergers.     

Pricing inputs to induce efficient Make-or-Buy decisions

We investigate input pricing regimes that induce efficient Make-or-Buy decisions by entrants when there is constant returns in the production of the input(s) and simultaneous noncooperative price competition in downstream retail markets. Necessary and sufficient conditions for efficient Make-or-Buy decisions are derived. The necessary condition shows that input prices are relevant for Make-or-Buy decisions except under restrictive and often unverifiable assumptions on the demand structure, and that the least informationally-demanding way to ensure efficient Make-or-Buy decisions is to price inputs at marginal cost provided changes in the entrant’s cost have a “normal” effect on the entrant’s profit. The conditions also show that pricing the incumbent’s input at the entrant’s marginal cost always ensures efficient Make- or-Buy decisions. The extent to which input prices can depart from marginal cost while still inducing efficient Make-or-Buy decisions increases with the efficiency differential between the incumbent and entrant and with the demand displacement ratio.      

Optimality: where competition fails and monopoly succeeds

Where, initially, the demand curve is a marginal curve and the supply curve is an average curve, ‘exploitation’ only of the supply curve, transforming it into a marginal curve, is required. If, initially, the reverse is true, optimality requires that the demand curve alone be ‘exploited’.     

Peak-load pricing with continuous and interdependent demand

Issues concerning time-of-use (TOU) pricing with continuous and interdependent demand are examined in a context where increasing marginal costs of production, as opposed to capacity constraints, provide the major incentive for flattening the load curve. The analysis develops the underlying consumer preferences sufficient to insure a continuously varying load curve and generalizes previous considerations of the peak load pricing problem by simultaneously considering continuous and interdependent demand in determining optimal prices and pricing period lengths. A profit incentive for TOU pricing as a form of price discrimination is revealed, which is tempered as substitution across pricing periods allows limited intertemporal arbitrage. The profit incentive leads a price-regulated firm, ceteris paribus, to choose a peak pricing period longer than the social optimum.     

Vertical Relationships between Manufacturers and Retailers: Inference with Limited Data

In this paper, different models of vertical relationships between manufacturers and retailers in the supermarket industry are compared. Demand estimates are used to compute price-cost margins for retailers and manufacturers under different supply models when wholesale prices are not observed. The purpose is to identify the set of margins compatible with the margins obtained from estimates of cost and to select the model most consistent with the data among non-nested competing models. The models considered are (1) a simple linear pricing model; (2) a vertically integrated model; and (3) a variety of alternative (strategic) supply scenarios that allow for collusion, non-linear pricing, and strategic behaviour with respect to private label products. Using data on yogurt sold in several stores in a large urban area of the U.S. the results imply that wholesale prices are close to marginal cost and that retailers have pricing power in the vertical chain. This is consistent with non-linear pricing by the manufacturers or high bargaining power of the retailers.