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.     

互联网新商业模式下寡头厂商定价研究——基于共享经济市场的分析

互联网经济下,厂商不断探索产品定价问题,考虑共享经济中典型因素：会员制,消费者寻求多样化购买和厌恶拥塞等。建立了两期非合作动态博弈模型,研究表明厂商在第一期竞争时平分市场,期望总收益与会员价格相关。证明了厂商第二期存在三度价格歧视均衡定价,定价与多样化购买因子相关。研究表明：在互联网背景下,企业根据消费者历史数据,细分消费者市场,获得更高收益;同时企业需要丰富产品线,促进消费者寻求多样化购买,同时应制定合理会员价格。     

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.     

Endogenous price leadership in a duopoly: Equal products, unequal technology

In the present paper we study endogenous price leadership in the context of a homogeneous product Bertrand duopoly model in which the firms have different, strictly convex cost functions. In such a framework it is well known that a simultaneous move price choice game does not have an equilibrium in pure strategies, but it has an equilibrium in mixed strategies. In the Stackelberg games with an exogenous price leader, we show that a pure strategy subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) always exists. Although the SPNE might not be unique, the payoffs are the same across all SPNE. Finally, we analyze the issue of endogenous price leadership using the continuous version of the Robson (1990) timing game. The result is unexpected. One would expect the more efficient firm to emerge as the endogenous price leader. This is not always true. In most cases the endogenous leader is the firm with the highest "threshold" price. However, we also provide conditions under which the more efficient firm emerges as the leader. Our paper essentially complements Yano (2001) , which is based on the Hamilton and Slutsky (1990) framework.     

采购人在预算约束下高价采购需求与社会公众采购低价期望的博弈分析

在政府采购过程中，采购人作为采购需求方期望采购到质量高、尽可能满足其使用需求的商品，但由此会提高政府采购价格。我国实行政府集中采购的主要目的之一就是要降低采购价格，促进公共财政节支。因此，社会公众、政府监督管理部门会通过其监督作用约束政府采购价格尽可能低。本文运用博弈论方法分析采购人与社会公众监督管理部门在政府采购过程中两方的博弈均衡结果，并提出相应对策建议。     

Choosing Winners and Losers in a Classroom Permit Trading Game

This paper presents a classroom game in which students trade pollution permits. By changing the distribution of permits across firms, the game shows students how the allocation of property rights determines the winners and losers in the permit trading system but does not affect the efficiency of the system. This game can be used in a variety of classes, including principles or environmental economics, and can be conducted in a 50-minute class period with follow-up discussion in the next class.     

Does Crime Pay? A Classroom Demonstration of Monitoring and Enforcement

This article presents a classroom game in which students choose whether or not to comply with pollution regulations. By varying the level of monitoring and fines for noncompliance, the game shows students how the probability and severity of enforcement affects incentives for compliance. The game can be adapted for settings other than environmental regulation and can be used in a variety of classes including regulation, law and economics, environmental economics, public economics, or economics of crime classes. It can easily be conducted in a 50-minute class period.     

价格激励行为下物流外包的信号博弈研究

将价格激励行为引入到第三方物流的选择中,利用著名的＂二手车＂单价模型,分析物流提供商如何制定价格激励政策,促使物流外包企业制定有利于其收益的外包价格,以及在第三方物流的价格激励政策下,物流外包企业如何制定最优外包价格,使第三方物流在满足自身激励约束前提下,选择对外包企业最有利的行动,最大化外包企业的期望效用。     

理论与现实:从两个维度深化认识劳动价值论

文中提出设计一种共同补货期 (CRE的机制用于供应链库存控制 ,分析了合作性供应链库存带来的优势。在这种机制下 ,供应商规定共同的补货期 ,要求所有的购买者必须在这个期间内订货 ;供应商提供一个价格折扣以诱使购买者按受这种策略。通过解一个Stackelberg博奕模型求出供应     

Console Price and Software Availability in the Home Video Game Industry

Using hedonic results from a unique data set covering the U.S. home video game industry (1976–2003) the interaction between software provision and console price is analyzed. Increased software provision negatively effects console price. This is contrary to many empirical pricing studies in the network effects literature greater software provision makes hardware more valuable and this should be reflected by increased hardware price. However, the main result from the paper is consistent with the recent theoretical literature on two-sided markets. Also, findings suggest the two-sided pricing strategy employed by hardware firms is dynamic. The percent of price decrease accredited to game provision decreases over time.     

Identifying Price Discrimination When Product Menus Are Endogenous

A well‐known approach to identifying second‐degree price discrimination is based on examining correlations between product menus and prices. When product menus are endogenous, however, tests for price discrimination may be biased by the fact that unobservables affecting costs or demand may jointly determine product menus and prices, leading one to falsely infer price discrimination. Using observed product characteristics or fixed effects to control for these unobservables confounds inference on the nature of price discrimination by potentially “overcorrecting” the original bias. I propose a difference‐indifferences approach that is robust to this critique. An application to the pricing of different package sizes of paper towels is presented.     

Endogenous price leadership and technological differences

This study constructs a two-stage game of price leadership in a duopolistic market for a homogeneous product. In the first period, the two firms determine a price leader; they set a price for the product in the second period. It is demonstrated in the present study that the technologically superior firm tends to become a price leader. This result reveals that price leadership is determined by the interaction of "competitive force", which prevents the price leader from choosing too high a price (like the joint profit maximizing price or the cartel price), and "collusive force", which prevents a price from falling to a Bertrand price.     

Cournot, bertrand, and modern game theory

Although it is not generally remembered or known, Cournot applied his equilibrium concept to both quantity rivalry and price rivalry. This makes some of the nomenclature in modern game theory seriously inappropriate. Several critics, past and present, have treated Cournot's quantity rivalry case as only conveniently veiled price rivalry. If Cournot's mathematics are pursued far enough, it is clear that he had a method that symmetrically applies to both quantity rivalry and price rivalry.     

物价上涨形势下农民与中间商收益博弈的讨论

本文针对当前物价持续强势上涨的现象,简短剖析了物价的上涨态势。同时利用博弈理论,建立博弈模型,并从实际与理论出发,分析、比较了中间商与农民在该过程中的得利情况。同时对如何抑制物价上涨和促进农民增收问题提出了相关建议。     

Price discrimination across different ticket distribution channels: Evidence from the US-china flight market

In the US-China international flight market, airlines sell tickets in two different distribution channels at vastly different prices. This provides a rare opportunity to examine how airlines practice price discrimination across different ticket distribution channels. Using a unique dataset collected from this market, we find that price discrimination across different ticket distribution channels is not influenced by market competition but increases with demand.     

EXPLOITING AN ADVANTAGE--DECLINING AN ADVANTAGE

Within the context of the study, a firm is said to have an advantageover another if it obtains more customers given they both chargethe same price. Further, consumer switching costs imply thelarger the difference in the prices charged by the two firmsthe greater the proportion of consumers who switch from thehigher-priced firm to the lower-priced one. The Nash equilibriumto the price-posting game is characterized The firm with theadvantage charges a higher price Finally, it is shown that ifone firm can freely choose to have an advantage, it will rejectit. This follows as the greater the advantage, the smaller theequilibrium profits to both firms.     

Price discrimination in physician services markets based on race: New test of an old implicit hypothesis

Prior econometric studies of physician fee determination report that fees are positively related to the proportion of the market area that is black and negatively related to the proportion of the market area that is white, but the studies provide only sketchy explanations for these results. This article presents a price discrimination model which explains the empirical results and provides the specific prediction that low income self-pay consumers in the black community constitute the group that pays higher prices for physician services. The study then replicates prior econometric results on a more recent national database, but finds that the results are sensitive to specification. When geographic differences are controlled for in the empirical model, the results fade and a statistical test indicates that the expanded specification is superior to the specification which replicated the price discrimination result. The conclusion is that there is no compelling evidence of price discrimination in physician services markets based on race.     

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.     

Centralized wage setting under alternative monetary policy rules

Sumary This paper characterizes the wage setting behavior in a totally unionized economy under different monetary policy strategies. The wage formation strategy of the union can be either aggressive or cooperative. As long as the union is fully cooperative and in the absence of shocks, the government can completely attain its macroeconomic targets: full employment and price stability. If, however, the union becomes unexpectedly aggressive, a constant money supply rule has a nominal wage inflation bias under certain plausible assumptions. By changing the rules of the game,e.g. following a nominal GNP or price level (inflation) rule, wage demands would be lower and the economy better off.I thank an anonymous referee for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

电信运营业的价格歧视分析

电信运营业传统上被视为自然垄断行业,再加上电信自身的运营特点,使得价格歧视成为电信运营商常用的一种定价手段。通过价格歧视电信运营商夺取消费者剩余,严重损害了消费者的利益。由于技术的进步,电信运营业的自然垄断性质发生了很大的改变,电信运营业中的价格歧视已经失去了存在的必要。价格是企业重要的竞争手段,对电信运营业的自然垄断的规治首先应加强对其价格歧视的管制。