Beyond price discrimination: welfare under differential pricing when costs also differ

Yongmin Chen and Marius Schwartz

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We extend the analysis of monopoly third-degree price discrimination to the empirically important case where marginal costs also differ between markets. Differential pricing then reallocates output to the lower-cost markets, hence welfare can increase even if total output does not, unlike under pure price discrimination. To induce output reallocation the firm varies its prices but---again, unlike under pure price discrimination---with no upward bias in the average price. Due to this price dispersion, differential pricing motivated solely by cost differences will increase consumer surplus (and total welfare) for a broad class of demand functions. We also provide sufficient conditions for beneficial differential pricing in the hybrid case where both demand elasticities and marginal costs differ.

Keywords: price discrimination; differential pricing; price dispersion; add-on pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D4 L1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-12-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ind, nep-mic and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:43393

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