Price Discrimination between Retailers with and without Market Power

Barick Chung and Eric Rasmusen ()
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Barick Chung: Department of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong

No 2008-14, Working Papers from Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy

Abstract: Some retail markets are more competitive than others. A manufacturer with market power in the wholesale market who sells his product to competing retailers in cities and monopolistic ones in each of various towns must set the wholesale price difference between towns and cities to be smaller than the transportation cost to prevent “grey market” arbitrage. If he uses linear pricing, the town retail price will be even higher than under single-retailer double marginalization. Two-part tariffs do not solve the problem as they would if there were a single retailer, because the wholesale unit price must be higher than marginal cost to prevent arbitrage to the cities. If transportation costs are low, price discrimination is difficult and two- part tariffs come to resemble inefficient linear monopoly pricing. High transportation costs allow greater efficiency in contracting, and this can outweigh the negative direct effect on welfare.

Keywords: price discrimination; double marginalization; retail network; transportation costs; two-part tariffs; vertical restraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D4 L42 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-mic
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