 Damaged Durable GoodsIndustrial Organization from University Library of Munich, Germany Abstract: A durable-goods monopolist may use quality degradation as a commitment not to lower price in the future. The introduction of damaged goods expedites low-valuation consumers’ future demands, and helps the firm to mitigate the Coasian time-consistency problem. In such a case, damaged goods are more likely to be observed relative to the static setting where only the price-discrimination aspect of quality degradation is in effect. However, it is more likely to reduce welfare by inducing low- valuation buyers to buy the low-quality good early rather than to wait and buy the high-quality good later. So, quality degradation of durable goods is more likely to occur but less promising to the society, relative to the case of non-durable goods where damaged goods are rarely observed but more likely to be Pareto-improving. Keywords: Damaged Goods; Quality Degradation; Durable-Goods Monopoly; Time-Consistency (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpio:0211010 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Industrial Organization from University Library of Munich, Germany |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.