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Disclosure and Pricing of Attributes

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  • Smolin, Alex

Abstract

A monopolist seller owns an object that has several attributes. A buyer is privately informed about his tastes and uncertain about the attributes. The seller can disclose attribute information to the buyer in a form of a statistical experiment. The seller offers a menu of call options varying in upfront payments, experiments, and strike prices. I study revenue-maximizing menus and show that optimal experiments belong to a simple class of linear disclosures. I fully characterize an optimal menu for a class of single-minded buyers. Surprisingly, the menu is nondiscriminatory and can be implemented by a single partial disclosure followed by a posted price.

Suggested Citation

  • Smolin, Alex, 2017. "Disclosure and Pricing of Attributes," MPRA Paper 84132, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:84132
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Daniel Krähmer & Roland Strausz, 2015. "Optimal Sales Contracts with Withdrawal Rights," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 762-790.
    2. Samuelson, William F, 1984. "Bargaining under Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 995-1005, July.
    3. Eső, Péter & Szentes, Balázs, 2017. "Dynamic contracting: an irrelevance theorem," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 69403, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Lewis, Tracy R & Sappington, David E M, 1994. "Supplying Information to Facilitate Price Discrimination," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(2), pages 309-327, May.
    5. Myerson, Roger B., 1982. "Optimal coordination mechanisms in generalized principal-agent problems," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 67-81, June.
    6. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Bonatti & Alex Smolin, 2018. "The Design and Price of Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(1), pages 1-48, January.
    7. Kelvin J. Lancaster, 1966. "A New Approach to Consumer Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(2), pages 132-132.
    8. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    9. Dirk Bergemann & Ji Shen & Yun Xu & Edmund M. Yeh, 2012. "Multi-dimensional Mechanism Design with Limited Information," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1859, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    10. Constantinos Daskalakis & Alan Deckelbaum & Christos Tzamos, 2017. "Strong Duality for a Multiple‐Good Monopolist," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 735-767, May.
    11. Péter Eső & Balázs Szentes, 2007. "Optimal Information Disclosure in Auctions and the Handicap Auction," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 705-731.
    12. Eső, Péter & Szentes, Balázs, 2017. "Dynamic contracting: an irrelevance theorem," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Kraehmer, 2018. "Full surplus extraction in mechanism design with information disclosure," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_011_2018, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    2. Levent Celik & Mikhail Drugov, 2021. "Score Disclosure," Working Papers w0285, New Economic School (NES).
    3. Pham, Hien, "undated". "a reprendre_ WP annulé," TSE Working Papers 21-1263, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    4. Yingkai Li, 2021. "Selling Data to an Agent with Endogenous Information," Papers 2103.05788, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Attributes; Information Design; Mechanism Design; Private Disclosure; Call Options; Multidimensional Screening; Demand Transformation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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