Numerous contract scenarios in information technology goods and services, telecommunications, digital entertainment, and supply chain contracting feature demand uncertainty for individual customers (demand is subject to idiosyncratic demand shocks that change marginal valuations). Sellers in these scenarios often use non-linear pricing mechanisms (flat rate, two part tariffs, three-part tariffs...

We consider the implications of platform price discrimination in the context of card platforms. Despite the platform’s ability to price discriminate, we show it will set fees for card usage that are too low, resulting in excessive usage of cards. We show this bias remains even if card fees (or rewards) can be conditioned on each type of retailer that the cardholder transact with. We use our mod...

a r t i c l e i n f o This paper develops a new model to analyze price discrimination in matching markets where agents have private information about their respective qualities. On the basis of signals (car, clothing, club membership, etc.) purchased from profit-maximizing firms, men and women form beliefs about each other's qualities. The matching must then be stable in the following sense: th...

We consider an incumbent who operates in two independent markets and has private information about his production cost. In one of the markets, there is a potential entrant o¤ering a di¤erentiated product. The most reasonable perfect bayesian equilibrium is either the least cost separating equilibrium or the pooling equilibrium where both types of incumbents set the low cost monopoly prices. The...

In this paper we aim to explain intuitively heterogeneous firms’ optimal location decisions in a simple spatial market. To do so, we present and solve a four-stage game of entry, location, pricing and consumption in a spatial price discrimination framework with arbitrarily many heterogeneous firms. We provide a unique equilibrium outcome without imposing restrictions on the distribution of marg...

The existing literaturewhich analyses the relationship between the product differentiation degree and the sustainability of a collusive agreement on price assumes that firms cannot price discriminate, and concludes that there is a negative relationship between the product differentiation degree and the critical discount factor. This paper, in contrast, assumes that firms are able to price discr...

The availability and cost-efficiency of modern information and communication technology have made “interactive marketing” and individual customer addressability not only possible but economical. In 1991, Blattberg and Deighton Blattberg and Deighton [1991] defined the new frontiers for marketing opened by interactive computer technologies as the “age of addressability.” Today, ubiquitous comput...

CIRANO Le CIRANO est un organisme sans but lucratif constitué en vertu de la Loi des compagnies du Québec. Le financement de son infrastructure et de ses activités de recherche provient des cotisations de ses organisations-membres, d=une subvention d=infrastructure du ministère de l=Industrie, du Commerce, de la Science et de la Technologie, de même que des subventions et mandats obtenus par se...

Using a structural model of demand for automobile engine variants, this paper finds that there is second-degree price discrimination: markups increase with engine size. Still, average markups are lower than when models have just one engine. The paper develops the first empirical demand framework suitable for markets with variants. There is an unobserved product characteristic and a consumer-spe...