Low-valuation Buyers Research Articles

Optimal nonlinear pricing by a monopoly with smooth ambiguity preferences

This paper examines the optimal nonlinear pricing by a monopolist who has smooth ambiguity preferences and sells a single good to two types of buyers with high and low valuation. Ambiguity arises from the monopolist’s uncertainty about which of the subjective beliefs govern the unobserved types of buyers. We show that the prevalence of ambiguity aversion distorts the rent extraction-efficiency tradeoff under asymmetric information in the standard model. Specifically, the ambiguity-averse monopolist acts in a pessimistic manner with the perception that buyers are less likely to have high valuation than the objective beliefs. Compared with the standard model, low valuation buyers consume a less downward distorted quantity and high valuation buyers enjoy a greater information rent. The unit prices paid by all buyers are reduced and the ambiguity-averse monopolist earns a smaller expected profit.

Market Inefficiency, Entry Order and Coordination

The causes of market inefficiency are many. We suggest an additional cause — buyers’ random entry order. In a market where identical sellers compete for buyers of heterogeneous valuations, first come first served is the norm. Since all buyers choose the cheapest available good, a low-valuation buyer who enters the market late may find the remaining goods unaffordable, which causes markets not to clear. We therefore propose a coordination solution to the market inefficiency problem. We find that in a market where all the high-valuation buyers enter first and all the low-valuation buyers enter afterwards, the market clears effectively. Moreover, we find the inefficiency arising from buyers’ entry order becomes less of a problem in larger economies and vanishes in the limit.

MEETINGS AND MECHANISMS

AbstractThis article shows how meeting frictions affect equilibrium trading mechanisms and allocations in an environment where identical sellers post mechanisms to compete for buyers with ex ante heterogeneous private valuations. Multiple submarkets can emerge, each consisting of all sellers posting a particular mechanism and the buyers who visit those sellers. Under mild conditions, high‐valuation buyers are all located in the same submarket, and low valuation buyers can be in: (i) the same submarket, (ii) a different submarket, and (iii) a mixture of (i) and (ii). The decentralized equilibrium is efficient when sellers can post auctions with reserve prices or entry fees.

An Economic Model of Patent Exhaustion

The doctrine of patent exhaustion implies that the authorized sale of patented goods “exhausts” the patent rights in the goods sold and precludes additional license fees from downstream buyers. Courts have considered absolute exhaustion, in which the patent owner forfeits all rights upon an authorized sale, and presumptive exhaustion, in which the patent owner may opt-out of exhaustion via contract. This paper offers the first economic model of domestic patent exhaustion that incorporates transaction costs in licensing downstream buyers and considers how the shift from absolute to presumptive exhaustion affects social welfare. We show that when transaction costs are high, the patent owner has no incentive to individually license downstream users, and absolute and presumptive exhaustion regimes are equivalent. But when transaction costs are at the intermediate level, the patent owner engages in mixed licensing, individually licensing high-valuation buyers and uniformly licensing low-valuation buyers. Presumptive exhaustion is socially optimal when social benefits from buyer-specific pricing outweigh social costs from transaction cost frictions in individualized licensing, which requires sufficiently low transaction costs.

An Economic Model of Patent Exhaustion

The doctrine of patent exhaustion implies that the authorized sale of patented goods “exhausts” the patent rights in the goods sold and precludes additional license fees from downstream buyers. Courts have considered absolute exhaustion, in which the patent owner forfeits all rights upon an authorized sale, and presumptive exhaustion, in which the patent owner may opt-out of exhaustion via contract. This paper offers the first economic model of domestic patent exhaustion that incorporates transaction costs in licensing downstream buyers and considers how the shift from absolute to presumptive exhaustion affects social welfare. We show that when transaction costs are high, the patent owner has no incentive to individually license downstream users, and absolute and presumptive exhaustion regimes are equivalent. But when transaction costs are at the intermediate level, the patent owner engages in mixed licensing, individually licensing high-valuation buyers and uniformly licensing low-valuation buyers. Presumptive exhaustion is socially optimal when social benefits from buyer-specific pricing outweigh social costs from transaction cost frictions in individualized licensing, which requires sufficiently low transaction costs.

Sequential negotiations with loss-averse buyers

This paper analyzes sequential negotiations with exogenous breakdown risk between a risk-neutral seller and a loss-averse buyer who is privately informed about his valuation. I show that, compared to the risk-neutral benchmark, loss aversion on the buyer's side softens the rent-efficiency trade-off for the seller. The reason is that the higher the buyer's valuation is, the more he has to lose by rejecting the seller's offer. Thus, in equilibrium the seller's profits and overall efficiency are both higher than in the risk-neutral case. Moreover, I also show that loss aversion has a redistributive effect by increasing the equilibrium payoff of some low-valuation buyers and decreasing that of high-valuation ones.

Relative Price Dispersion: Evidence and Theory

Relative price dispersion refers to persistent differences in the price that different retailers set for one particular good relative to the price they set for other goods. Relative price dispersion accounts for 30 percent of the overall variance of prices at which the same good is sold during the same week and in the same market. Relative price dispersion can be rationalized as the consequence of a pricing strategy used by sellers to discriminate between high-valuation buyers who need to make all of their purchases in one store, and low-valuation buyers who are able to purchase different items in different stores. (JEL D83, L11, L21, L81)

Intermediation in Markets with Buyer and Seller Selection: Theory and an Application to Real Estate Brokerage

Many markets are one-to-one matching markets in which match-making intermediaries enable pairs of buyers and sellers to negotiate a transaction price for a good or service. Examples are real estate markets in which realtors search for matches between potential home buyers and sellers, or labor markets in which employment services help the unemployed find work by filling firms’ vacancies. This paper investigates the socially optimal size and market structure of such markets. Firstly, it shows that it is socially optimal for intermediaries to have some market power. That is, it is socially optimal that intermediaries charge a service fee that is above the per-match cost as this excludes some low valuation buyers, which are disliked by sellers, as well as some high reservation price sellers, which are disliked by buyers. Secondly, it shows that matching markets are generally characterized by an excessive number of intermediaries that operate in the market compared to what is socially optimal. When calibrating the model using data from the Belgian real estate brokerage industry, the welfare counterfactuals suggest that the observed average commission rate of 4.3% is below the socially optimal commission rate, which is estimated to be in the range between 5.1% and 24%. A welfare gain of 1% to 11% could be established when regulating broker service fees, given the number of brokers that currently operate in the market. When also regulating broker entry, a further welfare gain of 7% to 69% could be realized. Various other policy relevant welfare counterfactuals are constructed and discussed.

Dynamic sorting in durable goods markets with buyer heterogeneity

AbstractIn a competitive dynamic durable good market where sellers have private information about quality, I identify certain inefficiencies that arise due to heterogeneity in buyers' valuations. Even if the market induces dynamic sorting among sellers and all goods are eventually traded, inefficiency can arise because high valuation buyers buy early when low‐quality goods are sold, while high‐quality goods are allocated to low valuation buyers that buy later. This misallocation adds to the inefficiency caused by delay in trading. Under certain circumstances, high‐quality goods may never be traded as in a static market.

Price discrimination via information provision

We study price discrimination where different prices are offered as a bundle with different levels of information about a product. The seller’s price discrimination induces high valuation buyers to purchase a good without information and low valuation buyers to purchase with information. Our analysis highlights several interesting results about price discrimination: (i) the seller’s choice of information provision is the combination of full information and no information, (ii) products can be cheaper without information provision than with information provision, (iii) as a result of price discrimination, prices can be more dispersed as buyers’ valuations become largely similar, and (iv) the high valuation buyers purchase a damaged good and may earn negative surplus. Furthermore, we investigate under which circumstances price discrimination is more profitable than uniform pricing. We show that a decline in transportation costs which facilitate price discrimination can be welfare reducing.

Menu Pricing and Learning

We analyze the design of dynamic menus to sell experience goods. The quality of the product is initially unknown, and the total quantity sold in each period determines the amount of information in the market. We characterize the optimum menu as a function of consumers' beliefs, and the dynamic adjustments resulting from the diffusion of information. The firm faces a dynamic trade-off between gains from trade, information production, and information rents. It initially charges lower prices, sacrificing short-term revenue to increase sales. As more information is revealed, prices increase, and low-valuation buyers are excluded, even when the product's quality is high. (JEL D42, D82, D83, L12)

Menu Pricing and Learning

We address the question of designing dynamic menus to sell experience goods. A dynamic menu consists of a set of price-quantity pairs in each period. The quality of the product is initially unknown, and more information is generated through experimentation. The amount of information in the market is increasing in the total quantity sold in each period, and the firm can control the information flow to the market by adjusting the level of sales. We derive the optimal menu as a function of consumers' beliefs about product quality, and characterize the changes in prices and quantities resulting from information diffusion. The equilibrium menu prices are the result of a dynamic trade-off between immediate gains from trade, information production, and information rents. The firm initially charges lower prices, in order to increase sales above the static optimum, sacrificing short-term gains in order to invest in information. As the market obtains more information, the firm gradually shifts to a policy designed to extract revenue from high-valuation buyers. This policy may eventually exclude low-valuation buyers from the market, even if the product's underlying quality is in fact high.

Damaged durable goods

I analyze a durable‐goods monopolist's incentives to introduce a damaged good (a stripped‐down version of the original good) in an infinite‐horizon framework. The damaged good helps the monopolist to mitigate the Coasian time‐inconsistency problem. However, it may lead to a welfare reduction: low‐valuation buyers are induced to purchase the low‐quality damaged good early rather than buy the high‐quality original good later, and when the players are patient the surplus loss from quality reduction outweighs the gain from earlier consumptions. This welfare result contrasts with the previous literature based on a static framework.

A Pecuniary Reason for Income Mixing

Empirical studies have found a high degree of income mixing in American neighborhoods. We give a new explanation of this phenomenon that is based on consumer search. A low price for a given good benefits high valuation buyers more than low valuation buyers. But with search, the probability of obtaining a low price is increasing in the proportion of low valuation buyers. This gives high valuation buyers an incentive to live near low valuation buyers. With many goods, a buyer has an incentive to live near neighbors whose valuations are uncorrelated with hers.