A Pedagogical Note on Multitier Pricing Scheme.

This note derives a new formula for determining a monopolist’s optimal multitier pricing scheme for any given number of tiers. It further characterizes Gabor’s (Review of Economic Studies) two-tier pari passu marginal revenue function to the <named-content> n </named-content>-tier case. By introduci...

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Published in:American Economist Vol. 63; no. 2; pp. 228 - 245
Main Authors: Chang, Winston W., Chen, Tai-Liang
Format: Article
Published: Sage Publications Inc. Oct2018
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Oct2018
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      pub: Sage Publications Inc.
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        atl: A Pedagogical Note on Multitier Pricing Scheme.
      aug:
        au:
          Chang, Winston W.
          Chen, Tai-Liang
        affil:
          The State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
          Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China
      su:
        Pricing
        Monopolistic competition
        Price discrimination
        Public utilities
        Public welfare
        Economics
      sug:
        subj:
          Pricing
          Monopolistic competition
          Price discrimination
          Public utilities
          Public welfare
          Economics
      keyword:
        monopoly
        multitier pricing
        public utility pricing
        second-degree price discrimination
        social welfare
      ab: This note derives a new formula for determining a monopolist’s optimal multitier pricing scheme for any given number of tiers. It further characterizes Gabor’s (Review of Economic Studies) two-tier pari passu marginal revenue function to the <named-content> n </named-content>-tier case. By introducing the individual tier’s marginal revenue and the pari passu marginal revenue in a linear demand case, this note provides a perceptive graphical representation of the optimal pricing scheme, revealing that all tiers’ outputs are equal, the last tier’s price is always higher than the marginal cost, and an increase in the number of tiers increases social welfare. In a class of nonlinear demand functions, it shows that starting from the first tier, the tiers’ outputs are monotonically increasing (decreasing) if the demand function is strictly convex (concave). It also shows that the equal-tier-output property preserves in the linear demand case with the total output fixed as a constraint.JEL Classification: D01, D21, D42, L12, L21
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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