Nonlinear pricing of e-market transaction services

A key element of the business structure for electronic markets is the design of price schedules for transaction services. Stock exchanges and transaction service providers around the world regard transaction fees not only as a major source of income but also as an incentive mechanism for investors. In this paper, we discuss the principles of nonlinear transaction fee schedules and present the results of a field experiment on investor order behaviour. We find that the number and the volume of orders are influenced by the transaction fee schedule. Furthermore, the initial endowment of participants has an impact on the price elasticity of the demand for transaction services. The discussion highlights the need for a structured approach for price schedule design in the context of market engineering.