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.     

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。     

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.     

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。     

Price Discrimination by a Many-Product Firm

Determining the optimal selling strategy for a multiproduct firm facing consumers with unobservable tastes is a difficult task. This paper aims to show how almost optimal nonlinear tariffs can often be found when the number of products is large. Moreover, such tariffs take a simple form: (i) when taste parameters are independently distributed across products, the almost optimal tariff is a single cost-based two-part tariff which can extract virtually all consumer surplus; (ii) when tastes are correlated across products, perhaps because of income differences across consumers, the almost optimal tariff can be implemented as a menu of two-part tariffs each of which has prices proportional to marginal costs.     

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     

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.     

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.     

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。     

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。     

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.     

Asymmetric Regulation of Access and Price Discrimination in Telecommunications*

Suppose that a strong and a weak operator compete in a telecommunications market. To terminate a call operators need access to the competitor’s network if the call is off-net. Operators set two-part tariffs and price-discriminate according to termination of a call. Suppose as a benchmark that access prices are regulated at costs. I show that the weak operator’s profit and consumer welfare increase if the regulator sets a higher price to access the weak operator’s network. However, total surplus decreases even locally. *I received helpful comments from Mark Armstrong, Toker Doganoglu, Tommaso Valletti, Julian Wright, and, in particular, two referees and the editor Michael Crew. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Heisenberg Fellowship).     

试论工程招投标中合理低价问题

招标投标是建设工程市场准入的一项基本制度,作为判断标准之一的中标价格是否合理一直以来是市场各方争论的焦点.本文对合理低价问题的合理性进行了分析,针对我国建设工程工程量清单计价规范的实施,提出了低价中标的基本观点,并对市场环境建设提出了相关建议.     

论三个级别价格歧视间的关系

本文尝试着从联合需求曲线中裂变出三个级别的价格歧视,以此揭示出其间的内在联系。个别需求曲线的加总构成了联合需求曲线,它是就每单位的消费择优录取所有消费者的保留价格,将其从高到低依次排列的,因而它既反映了“不同的人”——高端客户与低端客户的需求强度的差异,也反映了“不同的量”——高端需求与低端需求的需求强度的差异。只要能成功地将联合需求曲线按“量”与按“人”进行拆分,就可以在不同的子市场依照不同的需求价格弹性对高端客户与高端需求定高价、对低端客户与低端需求定低价。     

转移成本、价格歧视和非对称寡头竞争

通过在Hotelling空间差异模型的基础上结合转移成本构建非对称企业竞争博弈模型.主要研究在非对称情况下,两企业在一致定价与价格歧视下竞争的均衡结果.还对两种不同定价体制下的均衡结果进行了比较,分析价格歧视是否强化竞争.研究发现价格歧视对竞争的效应是不确定的,很大程度受到两企业不对称程度的影响.     

Poverty-Reducing and Welfare-Improving Marginal Public Price and Price Cap Reforms

This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price cap regulations in a stochastic dominance framework. The key advantage is that the assessment as to whether pricing or price cap reforms are poverty reducing or welfare improving is not contingent on any given social welfare function. Rather, robust assessments of the impact of reforms can be made for wide classes of ethical judgments.