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on Microeconomics |
| By: | Bruno Jullien (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Markus Reisinger (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management); Patrick Rey (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of personalized pricing on brand distribution. We explore whether a brand manufacturer prefers to sell through its own retail outlet only (mono distribution) or through an independent retailer as well (dual distribution). Personalized pricing allows for higher rent extraction but also leads to more fierce intra-brand competition than does uniform pricing. Due to the latter effect, a brand manufacturer may prefer mono distribution even if the retailer broadens the demand of the manufacturer's product. By contrast, with uniform pricing, selling through both channels is always optimal. This result holds for wholesale contracts consisting of two-part tariffs as well as for linear wholesale tariffs. We also show that the manufacturer may obtain its largest profit in a hybrid pricing regime, in which only the retailer charges personalized prices. Keywords: personalized pricing, distribution channels, dual distribution, vertical contracting, downstream competition. |
| Keywords: | Vertical contracting,Distribution strategies,Personalized pricing,Downstream competition. |
| Date: | 2022–04–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03632634&r= |
| By: | Andrea Attar (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Thomas Mariotti (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); François Salanié (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PDG de l’Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (INRAE)) |
| Abstract: | This article surveys recent attempts at characterizing competitive allocations under adverse selection when each informed agent can privately trade with several uninformed parties: that is, trade is nonexclusive. We rst show that requiring market outcomes to be robust to entry selects a unique candidate allocation, which involves cross-subsidies. We then study how to implement this allocation as the equilibrium outcome of a game in which the uninformed parties, acting as principals, compete by making oers to the informed agents. We show that equilibria typically fail to exist in competitive-screening games, in which these oers are simultaneous. We nally explore alternative extensive forms, and show that the candidate allocation can be implemented through a discriminatory ascending auction. These results yield sharp predictions for competitive nonexclusive markets. |
| Keywords: | Adverse Selection,Entry-Proofness,Discriminatory Pricing,Nonexclusive,Markets,Ascending Auctions |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629592&r= |
| By: | Renato Gomes (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Jean-Marie Lozachmeur (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Lucas Maestri (FGV-EPGE - Universidad de Brazil) |
| Abstract: | We study oligopolistic competition by firms practicing second-degree price discrimination. In line with the literature on demand estimation, our theory allows for comovements between consumers' taste for quality and propensity to switch brands. If low-type consumers are sufficiently less (more) brand loyal than high types, (i) quality provision is inefficiently low at the bottom (high at the top) of the product line, and (ii) informational rents are negative (positive) for high types, while positive (negative) for low types. We produce testable comparative statics on pricing and quality provision, and show that more competition (in that consumers become less brand-loyal) is welfare-decreasing whenever it tightens incentive constraints (so much so that monopoly may be welfare-superior to oligopoly). Interestingly, pure-strategy equilibria fail to exist whenever brand loyalty is sufficiently different across consumers types. Accordingly, price/quality dispersion ensues from the interplay between self-selection constraints and heterogeneity in brand loyalty. |
| Keywords: | Price dispersion,Preference correlation,Asymmetric information,Price discrimination,Competition |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629496&r= |
| By: | Shota Ichihashi; Alex Smolin |
| Abstract: | A seller faces a consumer with an uncertain value for the product. The seller has imperfect private information about the value and requests additional data to set the price. The consumer can decline any request. The consumer's willingness to provide data depends on his belief about the seller's type which in turn depends on the request. We show that the type uncertainty limits the scope of data collection: All equilibrium payoffs are spanned by fully pooling equilibria in which the seller collects the same data regardless of the type. The seller's private information lowers efficiency and profits, but benefits the consumer by fueling his skepticism and preventing excessive data collection. Having less private information may enable the seller to collect more data directly from the consumer and may lower the overall consumer welfare. |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.08723&r= |
| By: | Daniel F. Garrett (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Renato Gomes (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Lucas Maestri (FGV-EPGE - Universidad de Brazil) |
| Abstract: | We study competition by firms that simultaneously post (potentially nonlinear) tariffs to consumers who are privately informed about their tastes. Market power stems from informational frictions, in that consumers are heterogeneously informed about firms' offers. In the absence of regulation, all firms offer quantity discounts. As a result, relative to Bertrand pricing, imperfect competition benefits disproportionately more consumers whose willingness to pay is high, rather than low. Regulation imposing linear pricing hurts the former but benefits the latter consumers. While consumer surplus increases, firms' profits decrease, enough to drive down utilitarian welfare. By contrast, improvements in market transparency increase utilitarian welfare, and achieve similar gains on consumer surplus as imposing linear pricing, although with limited distributive impact. On normative grounds, our analysis suggests that banning price discrimination is warranted only if its distributive benefits have a weight on the societal objective. |
| Keywords: | Asymmetric information,Informational frictions,Linear pricing,Nonlinear pricing,Oligopoly |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629517&r= |
| By: | Thomas Mariotti (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Nikolaus Schweizer (Tilburg University [Netherlands]); Nora Szech (KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology); Jonas von Wangenheim (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | We study the optimal design of information nudges for present-biased consumers who make sequential consumption decisions without exact prior knowledge of their long-term consequences. For any distribution of risks, there exists a consumer-optimal information nudge that is of cutoff type, recommending abstinence if riskiness is high enough. Depending on the distribution of risks, more or less consumers may have to be sacriced in that they cannot be warned even though they would like to be. Under a stronger bias for the present, the target group receiving a credible warning to abstain must be tightened, but this need not increase the probability of harmful consumption. If some consumers are more strongly present-biased than others, traffic-light nudges turn out to be optimal and, when subgroups of consumers differ sufficiently, the optimal traffic-light nudge is also subgroup-optimal. We finally compare the consumer-optimal nudge with those a health authority or a lobbyist would favor. |
| Keywords: | Nudges,Information Design,Present-Biased Preferences,Self-Control |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629566&r= |
| By: | Renato Gomes (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Andrea Mantovani (TBS - Toulouse Business School) |
| Abstract: | Online intermediaries greatly expand consumer information, but also raise sellers' marginal costs by charging high commissions. To prevent disintermediation, some platforms adopted price parity and anti-steering provisions, which restrict sellers' ability to use alternative sales channels. Whether to uphold, reform, or ban these provisions has been at the center of the policy debate, but, so far, little consensus has emerged. As an alternative, this paper studies how to cap platforms' commissions. The utilitarian cap reflects the Pigouvian precept according to which the platform should charge net fees no greater than the informational externality it exerts on other market participants. |
| Keywords: | Extreme value theory,Commission caps,Regulation,Price parity,Platforms |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629525&r= |
| By: | Johannes Hörner (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Anna Sanktjohanser (Yale University [New Haven], TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | We consider a repeated game, in which due to private information and a lack of flexible transfers, cooperation cannot be sustained efficiently. In each round, the buyer either buys from the seller or takes an outside option. The fluctuating outside option may be public or private information. When the buyer visits, the seller chooses what quality to provide. We find that the buyer initially forgoes mutually beneficial trades before then visiting more often than he would like to, myopically. Under private information, the relationship recurrently undergoes gradual self-reinforcing downturns when trust is broken and instantaneous recoveries when loyalty is shown. |
| Keywords: | Trust,Loyalty,Imperfect Monitoring |
| Date: | 2022–04–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03632455&r= |
| By: | Ehud Lehrer; Dimitry Shaiderman |
| Abstract: | In the classical Bayesian persuasion model an informed player and an uninformed one engage in a static interaction. The informed player, the sender, knows the state of nature, while the uninformed one, the receiver, does not. The informed player partially shares his private information with the receiver and the latter then, based on her belief about the state, takes an action. This action, together with the state of nature, determines the utility of both players. This paper analyzes a dynamic Bayesian persuasion model where the state of nature evolves according to a Markovian law. Here, the sender always knows the realized state while the receiver randomly gets to know it. We discuss the value of the sender when he becomes more and more patient and its relation to the \emph{revelation rate}, namely the probability at which the true state is revealed to the receiver at any stage. } |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.08659&r= |
| By: | Hanzhe Li |
| Abstract: | How does a biased lobbyist disclose information in anticipation of a career concerned politician? I develop a model to study this problem and show that the answer depends on the design of lobbying protocol. If the protocol requires the lobbyist's preference to be publicly known, career concerns improve the public's welfare by inducing the lobbyist to provide more information. In contrast, if the lobbyist's preference is not known, career concerns can instead discourage the provision of information. I also explore how the conventional transparency on decision consequences performs with different designs of lobbying protocol. In particular, the paper highlights a novel conflict that the transparency of the lobbyist's intent crowds out any potential positive effect of the transparency on consequences. |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.08876&r= |
| By: | Schmitz, Patrick W. |
| Abstract: | A buyer wants to purchase an innovative good from a seller. Both parties are risk-neutral, and payments from the buyer to the seller must be non-negative. After the contract is signed, the seller privately observes a signal, which may be informative about the seller's costs. We compare two contracting regimes. In the case of specific performance, the courts enforce the trade level specified in the contract. In the case of at-will contracting, the seller is free to walk away from the contract after the signal has been realized. While the buyer prefers specific performance and the seller prefers at-will contracting, the optimal regime from an economic efficiency point-of-view depends on the informativeness of the signal. |
| Keywords: | contract theory; specific performance; at-will contracts; asymmetric information; ex-post inefficiencies |
| JEL: | D86 H57 K12 L14 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:112839&r= |
| By: | Ramos, Paulo (Singapore Management University) |
| Abstract: | We present here a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an MDConnected Domain to support a Well Behaved Monotonic Social Choice Function. We require the domain to have a minimal number of preferences in which a pair of alternatives flips their relation, and these reversals must occurr in accordance to a tree graph. While this condition cannot be summarized by a set of restrictions on individual preferences, we provide two alternative characterizations that can, one that is necessary and another that is sufficient. |
| Date: | 2022–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:smuesw:2022_002&r= |
| By: | Dana Foarta; Massimo Morelli |
| Abstract: | Many recent reform episodes have led to increased policy complexity: laws and regulations that contain more contingencies, exemptions, and carry high bureaucratic implementation costs. Such complexity may be desirable if it better satisfies the needs of diverse political constituencies. It may be inefficient if it is a byproduct of a changing power balance in the reform process itself. This paper uses a formal model to disentangle these two cases and understand how increased bureaucratic participation in the reform process may create inefficient complexity. When policymaking requires more expertise, better informed bureaucrats may draft complex policies to pander to persuade their less informed political principals. We show that this type of inefficient complexity is the equilibrium outcome when politicians are uncertain about the bureaucracy's reform implementation capacity. Institutional changes that give more power to politicians relative to bureaucrats do not reduce inefficient complexity, and they cannot substitute the need for more bureaucratic capacity. |
| Keywords: | Bureaucratic Capacity, Complex Reforms, Delegated Policymaking |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp22180&r= |
| By: | Timothy Christensen; Hyungsik Roger Moon; Frank Schorfheide |
| Abstract: | We derive optimal statistical decision rules for discrete choice problems when the decision maker is unable to discriminate among a set of payoff distributions. In this problem, the decision maker must confront both model uncertainty (about the identity of the true payoff distribution) and statistical uncertainty (the set of payoff distributions must be estimated). We derive "efficient-robust decision rules" which minimize maximum risk or regret over the set of payoff distributions and which use the data to learn efficiently about features of the set of payoff distributions germane to the choice problem. We discuss implementation of these decision rules via the bootstrap and Bayesian methods, for both parametric and semiparametric models. Using a limits of experiments framework, we show that efficient-robust decision rules are optimal and can dominate seemingly natural alternatives. We present applications to treatment assignment using observational data and optimal pricing in environments with rich unobserved heterogeneity. |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.11748&r= |
| By: | Bruno Jullien (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Alessandro Pavan (Northwestern University [Evanston]); Marc Rysman (BU - Boston University [Boston]) |
| Abstract: | The chapter has 9 sections, covering the theory of two-sided markets and related empirical work. Section 1 introduces the reader to the literature. Section 2 covers the case of markets dominated by a single monopolistic rm. Section 3 discusses the theoretical literature on competition for the market, focusing on pricing strategies that rms may follow to prevent entry. Section 4 discusses pricing in markets in which multiple platforms are active and serve both sides. Section 5 presents alternative models of platform competition. Section 6 discusses richer matching protocols whereby platforms pricediscriminate by granting access only to a subset of the participating agents from the other side and discusses the related literature on matching design. Section 7 discusses identication in empirical work. Section 8 discusses estimation in empirical work. Finally, Section 9 concludes. |
| Keywords: | Matching,Network effects,Pricing,Platform,Two-sided market |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629451&r= |
| By: | Yann Bramoullé (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - AMU - Aix Marseille Université); Christian Ghiglino (Essex Pathways, University of Essex - University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | We introduce loss aversion into a model of conspicuous consumption in networks. Agents allocate their income between a standard good and a status good to maximize a Cobb-Douglas utility. Agents interact over a connected network and compare their status consumption to their neighbors' average consumption. Loss aversion has a profound impact. If loss aversion is large enough relative to income heterogeneity, a continuum of Nash equilibria appears and all agents consume the same quantity of status good. Otherwise, there is a unique Nash equilibrium and richest agents earn strict status gains while poorest agents earn strict status losses. |
| Keywords: | Loss Aversion,Conspicuous Consumption,Social Networks |
| Date: | 2022–04–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03630455&r= |
| By: | Francis de Véricourt (ESMT European School of Management and Technology GmbH); Huseyin Gurkan (ESMT European School of Management and Technology GmbH) |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly demonstrating their capacity to make better predictions than human experts. Yet, recent studies suggest that professionals sometimes doubt the quality of these systems and overrule machine-based prescriptions. This paper explores the extent to which a decision maker (DM) supervising a machine to make high-stake decisions can properly assess whether the machine produces better recommendations. To that end, we study a set-up, in which a machine performs repeated decision tasks (e.g., whether to perform a biopsy) under the DM’s supervision. Because stakes are high, the DM primarily focuses on making the best choice for the task at hand. Nonetheless, as the DM observes the correctness of the machine’s prescriptions across tasks, she updates her belief about the machine. However, the DM observes the machine’s correctness only if she ultimately decides to act on the task. Further, the DM sometimes overrides the machine depending on her belief, which affects learning. In this set-up, we characterize the evolution of the DM’s belief and overruling decisions over time. We identify situations under which the DM hesitates forever whether the machine is better, i.e., she never fully ignores but regularly overrules it. Moreover, the DM sometimes wrongly believes with positive probability that the machine is better. We fully characterize the conditions under which these learning failures occur and explore how mistrusting the machine affects them. Our results highlight some fundamental limitations in determining whether machines make better decisions than experts and provide a novel explanation for human-machine complementarity. |
| Keywords: | machine accuracy, decision making, human-in-the-loop, algorithm aversion, dynamic learning |
| Date: | 2022–05–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esm:wpaper:esmt-22-02&r= |
| By: | Haitian Xie; Ying Zhu |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the gap between the classical pricing theory and the data-based pricing theory. We focus on the problem of price discrimination with a continuum of buyer types based on a finite sample of observations. Our first set of results provides sharp lower bounds in the worst-case scenario for the discrepancy between any data-based pricing strategies and the theoretical optimal third-degree price discrimination (3PD) strategy (respectively, uniform pricing strategy) derived from the distribution (where the sample is drawn) ranging over a large class of distributions. Consequently, there is an inevitable gap between revenues based on any data-based pricing strategy and the revenue based on the theoretical optimal 3PD (respectively, uniform pricing) strategy. We then propose easy-to-implement data-based 3PD and uniform pricing strategies and show each strategy is minimax optimal in the sense that the gap between their respective revenue and the revenue based on the theoretical optimal 3PD (respectively, uniform pricing) strategy matches our worst-case lower bounds up to constant factors (that are independent of the sample size $n$). We show that 3PD strategies are revenue superior to uniform pricing strategies if and only if the sample size $n$ is large enough. In other words, if $n$ is below a threshold, uniform pricing strategies are revenue superior to 3PD strategies. We further provide upper bounds for the gaps between the welfare generated by our minimax optimal 3PD (respectively, uniform pricing) strategy and the welfare based on the theoretical optimal 3PD (respectively, uniform pricing) strategy. |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2204.12723&r= |
| By: | Tierney, Ryan (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study the package assignment model and its consequences for the model of matching with transfers. We show that on rich domains, strategy-proofness, joint monotonicity (of Barberà, Berga, and Moreno [American Economic Review, 106 (2016)]), anonymity in welfare, and continuity in welfare together imply conditional efficiency: the allocation cannot be improved by re-allocation of packages, keeping packages intact. Thus, rules are restricted to choosing, for each problem, a set of objects to distribute and a partitioning of these. Labor markets are auctions with unit demand, once anonymity is modified to account for productivity differences. In this case, conditional efficiency is no blocking (by matched pairs), the core component of the standard solution concept of stability. Thus, while it is known that stable outcomes can be strategy-proof, we show that a component of stability is necessary for incentives. These results are derived from the following result, also discovered here, on the restricted quasilinear domain: weak pairwise strategy-proofness, anonymity in welfare, and continuity in welfare imply no-envy. |
| Keywords: | Assignment game; Package auctions; Strategy-proofness |
| JEL: | C78 D44 D47 |
| Date: | 2022–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sdueko:2022_006&r= |