IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crs/wpaper/2004-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition, Incomplete Discrimination and Versioning

Author

Listed:
  • Khaled Diaw

    (Crest)

  • Jérôme Pouyet

    (Crest)

Abstract

Producers of software viewers commonly offer basic versions of their products for freewhile more sophisticated versions are highly priced, thereby providing less attractive orlower valuations consumers with larger utility levels. We give some foundations to thisoutcome called versioning. We consider a duopoly in which firms offer differentiated goodsto a representative consumer; the buyer has distinct marginal valuations for the quality ofthe products; each producer perfectly knows the consumer’s taste for its own product, butremains uninformed about its taste for the rival’s product.When each product cannot be purchased in isolation of the other one, a phenomenon ofendogenous preferences arises since a firm’s offer to the consumer depends on the informationunknown by the rival firm. Multiple equilibria emerge and the consumer’s rent increases withhis valuation for one product and decreases with the valuation for the other product. Bycontrast, when each product can be purchased in isolation of the other one, at the uniqueequilibrium consumers with larger valuations for a product earn higher rents.The analysis is undertaken under two alternative pricing policies: in the partially-discriminatorycase, producers make use of the known information only; in the fully-discriminatorycase, each producer second-degree price discriminates the consumer according to the unknowninformation. We show that, sometimes, firms prefer partial to full discrimination,i.e., strategic ignorance of consumers’ tastes for the rival brand softens competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Khaled Diaw & Jérôme Pouyet, 2004. "Competition, Incomplete Discrimination and Versioning," Working Papers 2004-20, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
  • Handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2004-20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2004-20.pdf
    File Function: Crest working paper version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marc Ivaldi & David Martimort, 1994. "Competition under Nonlinear Pricing," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 34, pages 13-69.
    2. Kenneth S. Corts, 1998. "Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly: All-Out Competition and Strategic Commitment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 306-323, Summer.
    3. Eric W. Bond & Thomas A. Gresik, 1997. "Competition between asymmetrically informed principals," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(2), pages 227-240.
    4. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Pouyet, Jerome, 2004. "The subsidiarity bias in regulation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1-2), pages 255-283, January.
    5. Spulber, Daniel F., 1989. "Product variety and competitive discounts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 510-525, August.
    6. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(2), pages 427-438, March.
    7. Calzolari, Giacomo & Pavan, Alessandro, 2006. "On the optimality of privacy in sequential contracting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 168-204, September.
    8. Röller, Lars-Hendrik & Miravete, Eugenio, 2003. "Competitive Non-Linear Pricing in Duopoly Equilibrium: The Early US Cellular Telephone Industry," CEPR Discussion Papers 4069, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Martimort David & Stole Lars, 2003. "Contractual Externalities and Common Agency Equilibria," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-40, July.
    10. Daniel F. Spulber, 1989. "Regulation and Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262192756, April.
    11. Thisse, Jacques-Francois & Vives, Xavier, 1988. "On the Strategic Choice of Spatial Price Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(1), pages 122-137, March.
    12. Olsen, Trond E. & Osmundsen, Petter, 2001. "Strategic tax competition; implications of national ownership," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 253-277, August.
    13. David Martimort, 1992. "Multi-principaux avec anti-sélection," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 28, pages 1-37.
    14. Bernheim, B Douglas & Whinston, Michael D, 1986. "Common Agency," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(4), pages 923-942, July.
    15. David Martimort & Lars Stole, 2009. "Market participation in delegated and intrinsic common‐agency games," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 78-102, March.
    16. Miravete, Eugenio, 2004. "Are all those Calling Plans Really Necessary? The Limited Gains From Complex Tariffs," CEPR Discussion Papers 4237, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. repec:adr:anecst:y:1994:i:34:p:03 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Bond, E.W. & Gresik, T.A., 1998. "Incentive Compatible Information Transfer Between Asymmetrically Informed Principals," Papers 8-98-1, Pennsylvania State - Department of Economics.
    19. Holmes, Thomas J, 1989. "The Effects of Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 244-250, March.
    20. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "On the revelation of preferences for public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 79-93, August.
    21. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 1984. "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 171-196, Summer.
    22. Liu, Qihong & Serfes, Konstantinos, 2006. "Customer information sharing among rival firms," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1571-1600, August.
    23. Guesnerie, Roger & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1984. "A complete solution to a class of principal-agent problems with an application to the control of a self-managed firm," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 329-369, December.
    24. Geoffrey G. Parker & Marshall W. Van Alstyne, 2000. "Information Complements, Substitutes, and Strategic Product Design," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 299, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    25. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Khaled Diaw & Jérôme Pouyet, 2005. "Information, competition and (In) complete discrimination," Working Papers hal-00243025, HAL.
    2. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    3. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2011. "Nonexclusive Competition in the Market for Lemons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(6), pages 1869-1918, November.
    4. David Martimort & Lars Stole, 2009. "Market participation in delegated and intrinsic common‐agency games," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 78-102, March.
    5. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Pouyet, Jerome, 2004. "The subsidiarity bias in regulation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1-2), pages 255-283, January.
    6. Arribas, I. & Urbano, A., 2017. "Multiproduct trading with a common agent under complete information: Existence and characterization of Nash equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 14-38.
    7. Martimort David & Stole Lars, 2003. "Contractual Externalities and Common Agency Equilibria," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-40, July.
    8. Reggiani, Carlo, 2011. "Size (of the product) matters," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 329-344, July.
    9. Attar, Andrea & Campioni, Eloisa & Piaser, Gwenaël, 2013. "Two-sided communication in competing mechanism games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 62-70.
    10. d'Aspremont, Claude & Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe, 2010. "Oligopolistic competition as a common agency game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 21-33, September.
    11. Florence TOUYA, 2009. "Tax Interactions with Asymmetric Information and Nonlinear Instruments," Working Papers 9, CATT - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, revised Nov 2009.
    12. Florence Lachet-Touya, 2012. "Les interactions fiscales verticales à la lumière de la théorie des multiprincipaux," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 78(1), pages 27-46.
    13. Xiaodong Wu, 2000. ""Pollution Havens" and the Regulation of Multinationals by Multiple Governments," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1766, Econometric Society.
    14. Liu, Yizao & Shen, Shu, 2012. "Price Discrimination with Asymmetric Firms: The Case of the U.S. Carbonated Soft Drinks Market," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124619, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    15. Thomas A. Gresik, 2001. "The Taxing Task of Taxing Transnationals," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(3), pages 800-838, September.
    16. Florence TOUYA, 2013. "Tax Interactions with Asymmetric Information and Nonlinear Instruments," Working Papers 2012-2013_9, CATT - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, revised Jul 2013.
    17. Bergemann, Dirk & Pavan, Alessandro, 2015. "Introduction to Symposium on Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 679-701.
    18. Martimort, David & Stole, Lars, 2011. "Public Contracting in Delegated Agency Games," MPRA Paper 32874, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Perrin Lefebvre & David Martimort, 2022. "Delegation, capture and endogenous information structures," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(3), pages 357-414, July.
    20. Jentzsch, Nicola & Sapi, Geza & Suleymanova, Irina, 2013. "Targeted pricing and customer data sharing among rivals," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 131-144.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2004-20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Secretariat General (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crestfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.