IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/igtrxx/v13y2011i01ns0219198911002861.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Price Discrimination And Privacy: A Note

Author

Listed:
  • SUMIT JOSHI

    (Department of Economics, The George Washington University, USA)

  • YU-AN SUN

    (Xerox Corporation (This work was performed while the author was with Department of Computer Science, The George Washington University), USA)

  • POORVI L. VORA

    (Department of Computer Science, Academic Center, 801 22nd Street NW, Washington D.C. 20052, USA)

Abstract

In many instances of price discrimination, a seller of an item is in possession of signals from competing buyers regarding their private valuation for the item. If the seller uses this information to price discriminate against the buyer, buyers would correspondingly modify their signalling strategy. Our paper shows that the seller can gain by sometimes strategically ignoring the information contained in the signals and pricing the item in a non-discriminatory way. This "mixed" strategy induces buyers to send more informative signals in equilibrium than if the seller were to always price discriminate. Thus the seller can offset any revenue loss in states where he ignores information by the gains made in states where he can price discriminate more effectively due to the larger amount of information now communicated in the signals.

Suggested Citation

  • Sumit Joshi & Yu-An Sun & Poorvi L. Vora, 2011. "Price Discrimination And Privacy: A Note," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(01), pages 83-92.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:igtrxx:v:13:y:2011:i:01:n:s0219198911002861
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219198911002861
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219198911002861
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219198911002861?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krishna, Vijay, 2009. "Auction Theory," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 2, number 9780123745071.
    2. Timothy Salmon & Bart Wilson, 2008. "Second chance offers versus sequential auctions: theory and behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(1), pages 47-67, January.
    3. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    4. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    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. Haucap, Justus & Lange, Mirjam R. J. & Wey, Christian, 2012. "Nemo Omnibus Placet: Exzessive Regulierung und staatliche Willkür," DICE Ordnungspolitische Perspektiven 27, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    2. Juan Carlos Bárcena-Ruiz & F. Javier Casado-Izaga, 2005. "Spatial competition and the duration of managerial incentive contracts," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 29(2), pages 331-349, May.
    3. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    4. Manthos D. Delis & Sotirios Kokas & Steven Ongena, 2016. "Foreign Ownership and Market Power in Banking: Evidence from a World Sample," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 449-483, March.
    5. Christoph Schlueter-Langdon, 2000. "Information Technology And The Vertical Organization Of Industry," Computing in Economics and Finance 2000 174, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2011. "Price Discrimination," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 22, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Lukáš Čechura & Tinoush Jamali Jaghdani, 2021. "Market Imperfections within the European Wheat Value Chain: The Case of France and the United Kingdom," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-21, August.
    8. Nils Rudi & Sandeep Kapur & David F. Pyke, 2001. "A Two-Location Inventory Model with Transshipment and Local Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(12), pages 1668-1680, December.
    9. Qu, Zhan & Raff, Horst & Schmitt, Nicolas, 2018. "Incentives through inventory control in supply chains," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 486-513.
    10. Flora Bellone & Patrick Musso & Lionel Nesta & Frédéric Warzynski, 2009. "L'effet pro-concurrentiel de l'intégration européenne. Une analyse de l'évolution des taux de marge dans les industries manufacturières françaises," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(1), pages 139-163.
    11. Susan Velasco Portillo, 2015. "El agotamiento del régimen fordista boliviano y la financiarización de YPFB," Revista Lebret, Universidad Santo Tomás - Bucaramanga, vol. 7, pages 308-325, December.
    12. Boone, J., 2004. "Balance of Power," Other publications TiSEM d3f8cd4b-eaf0-4c1c-aed4-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Tesfatsion, Leigh, 2001. "Structure, behavior, and market power in an evolutionary labor market with adaptive search," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(3-4), pages 419-457, March.
    14. Andersson, Thomas, 1991. "Approaches to Partnerships Causing Asymmetries Between Japan and the West," Working Paper Series 320, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised Feb 1992.
    15. Barrie R. Nault & Rajeev K. Tyagi, 2001. "Implementable Mechanisms to Coordinate Horizontal Alliances," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(6), pages 787-799, June.
    16. Aamir Rafique Hashmi & Johannes Van Biesebroeck, 2016. "The Relationship between Market Structure and Innovation in Industry Equilibrium: A Case Study of the Global Automobile Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 192-208, March.
    17. Beviá, Carmen & Corchón, Luis C., 2013. "Endogenous strength in conflicts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 297-306.
    18. Dewit, Gerda & Leahy, Dermot, 2004. "Rivalry in uncertain export markets: commitment versus flexibility," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 195-209, October.
    19. Alberto Galasso & Mihkel Tombak, 2014. "Switching to Green: The Timing of Socially Responsible Innovation," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 669-691, September.
    20. Borota Milicevic, Teodora & Carlsson, Mikael, 2016. "Markups from Inventory Data and Export Intensity," Working Paper Series 2016:9, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price discrimination; noisy signaling; partition strategies; Bayesian-Nash equilibrium; JEL Classification: D42; JEL Classification: D82; JEL Classification: L12;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology
    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • C6 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • M2 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics

    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:wsi:igtrxx:v:13:y:2011:i:01:n:s0219198911002861. 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: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/igtr/igtr.shtml .

    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.