Menu implementability and practical pricing schemes

Research output: Other contributionOther outputsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

In the context of monopolistic nonlinear pricing, we compare the maximum profits of bundling, incremental discounts, and all-units discounts. When the number of pricing blocks is unrestricted, incremental discounts perform weakly the worst. However, if the performance of incremental discounts is not strictly worse when the number of blocks is unrestricted, then it performs the best when the number of blocks is restricted. It is because incremental discounts have the smallest "implementation power" and the largest "approximation power". These results are applications of our general theory of menu implementability, which characterizes the set of outcomes implementable by a menu of tariff options, where the set of admissible tariff options and the number of tariff options in the menu are pre-determined.
Original languageEnglish
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Aug 2011
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameSocial Science Research Network

Keywords

  • Nonlinear pricing
  • Bundling
  • Incremental discounts
  • All-units discounts
  • Incentive-compatible mechanisms

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