We analyze models of product differentiation with perfect price discrimination and free entry. Although perfect price discrimination ensures efficient output decisions given product characteristics, coordination failures may prevent efficiency in the choice of product characteristics. More...

A firm must decide whether to launch a new product. A launch implies considerable fixed costs, so the firm would like to assess downstream demand before it decides. We study under which conditions a potential buyer would be willing to reveal his willingness to pay under different pricing...

This paper selectively surveys the recent literature on price discrimination. The focus is on three aspects of pricing decisions: the information about customers available to firms; the instruments firms can use in the design of their tariffs; and the ability of firms to commit to their pricing...

On 9 July 1997 the Treasurer referred the international competitiveness of the Australian black coal industry to the Commission for inquiry and report within 12 months. The Commission is to identify ways of improving the international competitiveness of the Australian black coal industry which...

Parallel imports are a significant academic and policy issue. Official investigations into the impact of parallel imports on music CD prices have reached widely conflicting conclusions. This note reports an event study on an international panel of changes in copyright law to permit or disallow...

Recent developments in information technology (IT) have resulted in the collection of a vast amount of customer specific data. As the IT advances the quality of such information improves. We analyze a sequential spatial model of oligopolistic third degree price discrimination where the firms use...

We investigate how the endogenous acquisition of information, of a certain quality level, on consumers' willingness to pay (location) affects the equilibrium prices and welfare in a spatial price discrimination model. By varying the information quality we are able to obtain the equilibrium in...

We look at the incentives of two firms, who produce horizontally differentiated products, to acquire information of a certain quality on consumer willingness to pay. A firm who possesses such information can offer its product to different consumer groups at different prices (third degree price...

We investigate how the endogenous acquisition of information, of a certain quality level, on consumers' willingness to pay (location) affects the equilibrium prices and welfare in a spatial price discrimination model. Higher information quality implies that the firms who acquire the information...

A number of products that display positive network effects are used in variable quantities by heterogeneous customers. Examples include corporate operating systems, infrastructure software, web services and networking equipment. In many of these contexts, the magnitude of network effects are...