(Reverse) Price Discrimination with Information Design
67 Pages Posted: 16 Oct 2018 Last revised: 2 Mar 2020
Date Written: February 28, 2020
Abstract
A monopolistic seller is marketing a good to a customer whose willingness to pay is determined by both his private type and the quality of the good. The seller can design a menu of both prices and experiments—that reveal information about quality. We show that the optimal mechanism features both price discrimination and information discrimination: buyers with higher private types face lower prices and receive less precise positive signals. Our mechanism remains optimal within a general class of mechanisms satisfying ex post individually rationality. Overall, information design facilitates surplus creation on the extensive margin, but leads to surplus destruction on the intensive margin.
Keywords: price discrimination, mechanism design, information design, online advertising
JEL Classification: D82, D86, L15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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