Seminar

Monopoly Pricing and Information Provision for Selling Perfectly Divisible Goods.

Li Fei (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

June 5, 2023, 14:15–15:30

Room Auditorium 4

Industrial Organization seminar

Abstract

This paper investigates the optimal pricing and information disclosure for a monopolist selling a perfectly divisible good to a buyer. The buyer has an unknown threshold of desired consumption (needs), and the monopolist observes the buyer's needs and recommends how much to consume. We identify a condition that ensures the buyer consumes up to her maximum individually rational level, thus achieving the supremum of the seller's profit. Where this condition fails, (1) we provide a closed-form characterization of the optimal price and information structure, and (2) we derive a sufficient condition under which the buyer overconsumes beyond her needs almost surely.