We analyze third degree price discrimination by an upstream monopolist to a continuum of heterogeneous downstream firms. The novelty of our approach is to recognize that customizing prices may be costly. As a consequence, partial price discrimination arises in equilibrium; in particular,we...

I show that an advertising ban is more likely to increase — rather than decrease — total consumption when advertising does not bring about a large expansion of market demand at given prices and when it increases product differentiation (thus allowing firms to command higher prices). In this...