Abstract
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.
Lingua originale | Inglese |
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pagine (da-a) | 205-222 |
Numero di pagine | 18 |
Rivista | JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS |
Volume | 78 |
DOI | |
Stato di pubblicazione | Pubblicato - 2003 |
Keywords
- "concavification" of the revenue function
- increasing marginal revenue
- monopoly
- random selection of classes
- third-degree price discrimination