When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?

Sufficient conditions are developed for third-degree price discrimination by a monopolist serving all markets to reduce and raise social welfare. Welfare falls if the demand function in the market whose price is higher with discrimination is at least as convex as that in the other market (at the non...

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Main Author: Cowan, S
Format: Working paper
Language:English
Published: Department of Economics (University of Oxford) 2008
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author Cowan, S
author_facet Cowan, S
author_sort Cowan, S
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description Sufficient conditions are developed for third-degree price discrimination by a monopolist serving all markets to reduce and raise social welfare. Welfare falls if the demand function in the market whose price is higher with discrimination is at least as convex as that in the other market (at the non-discriminatory price). Welfare rises if inverse demand in the low-price market is more convex (at the discriminatory price) than inverse demand in the high-price market and the discriminatory prices are close together, so the cost of misallocation is less than the benefit of higher output.
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spelling oxford-uuid:c418d114-4abf-4639-b755-62ae5be414972022-03-27T06:21:01ZWhen does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?Working paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:c418d114-4abf-4639-b755-62ae5be41497EnglishDepartment of Economics - ePrintsDepartment of Economics (University of Oxford)2008Cowan, SSufficient conditions are developed for third-degree price discrimination by a monopolist serving all markets to reduce and raise social welfare. Welfare falls if the demand function in the market whose price is higher with discrimination is at least as convex as that in the other market (at the non-discriminatory price). Welfare rises if inverse demand in the low-price market is more convex (at the discriminatory price) than inverse demand in the high-price market and the discriminatory prices are close together, so the cost of misallocation is less than the benefit of higher output.
spellingShingle Cowan, S
When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?
title When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?
title_full When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?
title_fullStr When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?
title_full_unstemmed When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?
title_short When does third-degree price discrimination reduce social welfare, and when does it raise it?
title_sort when does third degree price discrimination reduce social welfare and when does it raise it
work_keys_str_mv AT cowans whendoesthirddegreepricediscriminationreducesocialwelfareandwhendoesitraiseit