with Correlated Consumer Types
JEL Classification Numbers: D42, D82
| Optimal
Multiproduct Nonlinear Pricing
with Correlated Consumer Types |
| Yossi Spiegel, Tel Aviv University |
| Simon Wilkie, Caltech |
| Current version: March 2001 |
| Abstract: 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. Our main insight is that regardless of the dimensionality of the consumers types and the number of goods that the monopoly produces, the surplus that each consumer gets from buying is a scalar. Hence, it is possible to design a two step mechanism where in the first step the monopoly induces the consumers to make efficient purchasing decisions (given their private information), and in the second step the monopoly extracts the surplus from each consumer via a (random) fixed fee. |
| Keywords:
nonlinear prices, multidimensional types, correlated types, incremental
cost, Clarke-Groves mechanism
JEL Classification Numbers: D42, D82 |
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| Last updated: August 23, 2001 |