This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established rms are...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting sticky consumers who are exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established firms are challenged by new...

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...

A price reversal pattern of ARV drugs was noted across lower and middle income countries in that the lower-income countries have higher prices relative to higher-income countries based on a 2008-2009 Summary Report by World Health Organization. The transaction costs affecting AVR drug pricing...

We study joint marketing arrangements by competing firms who engage in price discrimination between consumers who patronize only one firm (single purchasing) and those who purchase from both competitors (bundle purchasers). Two types of joint marketing are considered. Firms either commit to a...

We analyze the welfare effects of price discrimination by a monopolistic platform that mediates between two sides of a market. Discrimination is based on asymmetric costs on one side of the market and may be allowed on either or both sides. We show that unconstrained discrimination on both sides...

This paper generalizes the price discrimination framework of Mussa and Rosen (1978) by considering salience-driven consumer preferences in the sense of Bordalo et al. (2013b). Consumers with salience-driven preferences give a higher weight to attributes that vary more. This reduces the...

The unprecedented access of firms to consumer level data not only facilitates more precisely targeted individual pricing but also alters firms' strategic incentives. We show that exclusive access to a list of consumers can provide incentives for a firm to endogenously assume the price leader's...

In this study, we investigate behavioral constraints on pricing by using a novel laboratory experiment in which actual consumption goods are traded. We test different models and provide several insights into pricing and reactions to price discrimination. First, we identify the extent to which...

The paper shows that taking inventory control out of the hands of competitive or exclusive retailers and assigning it to a manufacturer increases the value of a supply chain especially for goods whose demand is highly volatile. This is because doing so solves incentive distortions that arise...