论文标题
随机机制的最佳价格歧视
Optimal Price Discrimination for Randomized Mechanisms
论文作者
论文摘要
我们通过双边贸易中的中介来研究价格歧视的能力,当时有收入最大化的卖方将物品出售给买方,并从先前获得的私人价值出售商品。在卖方和买方之间,有一个中介机构可以通过向卖方发布有关真实价值的信息来细分市场。这被称为信号,使卖方可以歧视。在这种情况下,Bergemann等人。展示了一种信号计划的存在,该计划同时增加了最佳的消费者盈余,保证该商品始终出售,并确保卖方的收入不会增加。 我们的工作扩展了Bergemann等人的积极结果。到类型空间更大的设置,以及最佳拍卖是随机的,可能是在菜单上呈指数较大的菜单。特别是,我们考虑预算动机的两个设置:第一个是在卖方可以收取的公开预算限制的情况下,第二个是联邦快递问题,在该问题中,买方具有私人截止日期或服务水平(等效地,保证永不约束的私人预算)。对于这两种设置,我们通过连续的施工过程介绍了一种新颖的信号传导方案及其分析,该过程重现了Bergemann等人的最佳消费者盈余保证。 我们认为的设置是更普遍的问题的特殊情况,除了私人价值外,买方还具有私人预算限制。我们最终表明,我们的积极结果并没有扩展到更一般的环境。在这里,我们表明,任何有效的信号计划都必须将几乎所有盈余转交给卖方而不是买方。
We study the power of price discrimination via an intermediary in bilateral trade, when there is a revenue-maximizing seller selling an item to a buyer with a private value drawn from a prior. Between the seller and the buyer, there is an intermediary that can segment the market by releasing information about the true values to the seller. This is termed signaling, and enables the seller to price discriminate. In this setting, Bergemann et al. showed the existence of a signaling scheme that simultaneously raises the optimal consumer surplus, guarantees the item always sells, and ensures the seller's revenue does not increase. Our work extends the positive result of Bergemann et al. to settings where the type space is larger, and where optimal auction is randomized, possibly over a menu that can be exponentially large. In particular, we consider two settings motivated by budgets: The first is when there is a publicly known budget constraint on the price the seller can charge and the second is the FedEx problem where the buyer has a private deadline or service level (equivalently, a private budget that is guaranteed to never bind). For both settings, we present a novel signaling scheme and its analysis via a continuous construction process that recreates the optimal consumer surplus guarantee of Bergemann et al. The settings we consider are special cases of the more general problem where the buyer has a private budget constraint in addition to a private value. We finally show that our positive results do not extend to this more general setting. Here, we show that any efficient signaling scheme necessarily transfers almost all the surplus to the seller instead of the buyer.