This article provides a model of loss leader pricing and quantity restrictions for a competitive multiproduct industry when individual consumers have continuous (and independent) demands for the set of available goods. Utilizing a generalization of the model proposed by Bliss [1988], we demonstrate the importance of consumer heterogeneity for the existence of cross subsidies when there is complete information and individual consumers have smooth, downward sloping demands. Continuous cross subsidies arising from consumer heterogeneity are also shown to exist in Hotelling models. Our use of continuous rather than 'unit' demands allows us to analyze issues related to welfare, which in turn exposes a strong incentive for the firm to place binding quantity restrictions on consumers. We also show how the presence of quantity restrictions can be used to distinguish between continuous cross subsidies arising from heterogeneous consumers versus those arising from classic demand complementarity with homogeneous agents. Copyright 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. and the Editorial Board of The Journal of Industrial Economics.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 56 (2008) Issue (Month): 4 (December) Pages: 840-861 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF