The value of information regarding risk class for a monopoly insurer and its customers is examined in both symmetric and asymmetric information environments. A monopolist always prefers contracting with uninformed customers as this maximizes the rent extracted under symmetric information while...

This paper presents a model of price screening for goods with network effects, by a monopoly seller, and by an entry-deterring monopolist. These products are used in variable quantities by heterogeneous customers, the magnitude of network effects is influenced by gross consumption, rather than...

We examine the design of nonlinear prices by a multiproduct monopolist who serves customers with multidimensional but correlated types. We show that the monopoly can exploit the correlations between consumers' types to design pricing mechanisms that fully extract the surplus from each consumer....

This paper analyzes optimal pricing for information goods under incomplete information, when both unlimited-usage (fixed-fee) pricing and usage-based pricing are feasible, and administering usage-based pricing may involve transaction costs. It is shown that offering fixed-fee pricing in addition...

This paper models the pricing of digital experience goods such as online video in a vertically segmented market under threat of piracy. By definition consumers know the true fit of an experience good only after they have consumed it and piracy offers an illegal consumption method. We develop a...

We study a buyer-seller problem of a novel good for which the seller does not yet know the production cost. A contract can be agreed upon at either the ex-ante stage, before learning the cost, or at the ex-post stage, when both parties will incur a costly delay, but the seller knows the...

This paper presents a model of second-degree price discrimination by a monopolistic seller who offers a menu of price-quantity pair contracts to consumers located in a social network. Network effects are local as consumers' private valuations are increasing in their friends' adoption decisions....

We analyse the roles of network connectivity and topology on the monopoly pricing of network goods which enable social interaction between consumers. Connectivity between network members induces the well-known network externalities effect, while the topological effect is caused by the...

We develop a model of inter-temporal and intra-temporal price discrimination by airlines to study the ability of different discriminatory mechanisms to remove sources of inefficiency and the associated distributional implications. To estimate the model's multi-dimensional distribution of...

We propose a tractable framework to introduce externalities in a screening model. Agents differ in both payoff-type and influence (how strongly their actions affect others). Applications range from pricing network goods to regulating industries that create externalities. Inefficiencies arise...